Garden Week inspiration

Perth's Garden Week is in its 42nd year and runs for another few days. Organisers say the event fell away for a while and there wasn't much interest, but in the past three years they've had more and more exhibitors and now the crowds are coming back.

 

 Here's a peek of what's there:

 

 

 

Don't forget you can sign up to follow this blog, by entering your email address in the field on the right. You'll get an email notification whenever a new post is published!

 

 

 

 

 

At the opening, the mayor of the Town of Cambridge, Simon Withers, spoke about how town planning is responsible, in part, for the amount of green space in the city. He said decreasing block sizes and councils that allow people to build massive houses on them, leaving no space for a lawn or a tree or two have created a 'heat island' in the city.

 

His council has banned synthetic lawn on verges and even stipulates what percentage of the space out the front of a house must be vegetated. He believes residents and councils must demand more green space and gardens in the planning process.

 

Mr Withers seemed very passionate about planting more street trees to create an air conditioning effect in the suburbs. After his talk we had a great conversation about town planning. We discussed the merits of not having walls at the front of your house, so it allows you to interact with your neighbours and bring the community feel back to your neighbourhood. I feel that by having my food garden out the front with no walls, it has allowed me to meet and strike up friendships with all my neighbours. That's something to think about for anyone planning or designing their front gardens. Maybe walling yourself away isn't the best idea. Oh, and go and plant a tree!

My garden is on the telly!

The episode went to air this weekend, I was very nervous about seeing it! I was happy to see my wonderful neighbour made the final cut, as well as Chilli and Mustard, the beagles.

 

I've had some requests from readers who want to follow The Garden Beagle... so I figured out how to add the follow function. Just enter your email address in the "FOLLOW BY EMAIL" on the right of your screen.

 

And if you missed the show, watch it here:

I met an inspiring woman... and you can too!

Yesterday, Garden Week opened in Perth. I got to meet a wonderful Australian - Stephanie Alexander:

Stephanie (I like to think we're on a first name basis now) is a keen kitchen gardener herself as well as being the author of a lot of cookbooks. But what I find most inspiring is her not-for-profit organisation that is teaching children the value of growing your own food and how to eat it. The Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Project was launched in 2004 and now involves 296 primary schools across Australia. In Western Australia 24 schools have joined the program and Stephanie said about 70 more in have put their hand up to take part.

 

Stephanie said her favourite place to be was in the garden. She had a bit of a poke about the Garden Week displays in between her engagements and she said what had caught her eye was the CSIRO limes. She was going to try to track some down in her home state of Victoria. I felt pretty chuffed that I have one of those limes. It is covered with fruit this year and I'm pretty excited to experiment with it in the kitchen when they ripen!

At Garden Week, the organisers set up this beautiful vege patch for Stephanie to use (below) and she'll be holding workshops with kids today.

Apart from my photo of Stephanie, I also took home some more native plants for my verge from the Carnaby's cockatoo display. I'm going to add couple of prostrate banksias, pimlea and more grevillia to the verge this afternoon.

I'll be back later with some more photos from garden week!



Did the camera man make my garden look good...?

As someone who works in television, I'm used to cameras. And I'm very good at interviews. The problem is I'm used to being the one who asks the questions. So when the Garden Gurus came around to interview me about my garden, I was not prepared for how strange it would be answering questions!

 

The Gurus have filmed my meagre kitchen garden. I can confidently say I've never spent so much time in the garden trying not to get dirty or let my makeup sweat off.

 

No sooner was I telling the lovely presenter Susannah Wilson about what a beautiful neighbourhood we live in, the neighbourhood turned out to see what all the fuss was about. I guess not every one has a whole film crew in the front yard every day.

 

I'm hoping my wonderful Italian neighbour makes the final cut, I mentioned what a wonderful guide she'd been to me in the garden and then she turned up, so they roped her in to being filmed.

 

Here are Susannah and I hard at work, discussing gardening:

 

The poor garden was so bare, despite my best efforts to cheat and I swear that in the days since the segment was filmed, my garden actually decided to grow. It now looks quite abundant, the tomatoes are tall, and covered in flowers, we're eating the salad greens that just look like weeds in the picture above!

 

Like I said, it was very strange being the interviewee, so I expect I will look very, very uncomfortable when the show airs... but you can judge for yourself! Wherever you are in Australia, tune in to the Garden Gurus THIS weekend! And for those readers living overseas, don't feel left out, you can go online and watch the show.

I feel a little bit out of my league after seeing the Guru's latest show, where Susannah interviewed a couple living in a beautiful multi-million dollar house with a garden that would have cost just as much. How can I follow that sort of luxury in my little vege patch?! ...but that couple did say "The gardeners say they really love working in our garden."

At least I do my own gardening!

In the meantime...

While I'm waiting around urging my vegetables to grow to be ready for the television show, I started another project in the garden. About a month ago, my wonderful and knowledgeable colleague Jenny invited me around for lunch so she would give me some cuttings of her frangipani trees. She had read about my frangipani envy and has several frangipanis worth envying in her backyard! Here's me with one of my cuttings:

I let the cuttings dry out for a month, leant up against a fence in the shade, while we prepared a new garden bed for them. In the front yard we had a mass of aloes... which prickled the back of your head when you were sitting around the outdoor table and appeared to be the perfect breeding spot for red-backed spiders. And snails. My husband hates them. So he took his chainsaw to them, cut them down and ripped them out. Here's my action man:

It wasn't until the aloes were gone, did we realise just how big that garden bed was. We planted the frangipani cuttings in the bed and are now hoping for the best. Again, I'm trying to cheat a bit, by getting a big cutting, I can have a small tree already and don't have to wait for it to grow. The flamingo looks happy beneath the tree and adds a festive air to the place:

Of course, I planted the whole bed out with mustard seed as well, just in case that darned root knot nematode has made a home in this soil as well. You can't be too careful!

Cheating

I'm still frantically trying to make my garden look productive after my nightmare. I'm getting serious about my cheating as the Garden Guru filming day gets closer. Not only have I resorted to buying punnets of vegetables, instead of growing them by seed, now I've taken it a step further. If I can't have plants in my garden, I will have structures! Here's my bamboo bean tee pee:

Who cares if there isn't any actual beans growing over it yet... you can imagine they're JUST ABOUT to grow all over it. Will I trick the viewers? I don't know. I did plant some runner bean seeds under it. A few have come up, but slaters ate the tops off. That means there could be another trip to the nursery to buy cheat runner beans!

A planting frenzy!

Just putting a quick shout out to all the people who've planted garlic in the past week!

I was overwhelmed by the response to my post 'Get some garlic in'. Lots of people have sent messages or stopped me to tell me they'd bought their garlic or had planted it already. You will be so happy you did later in the year when you taste your own home-grown garlic. And you'll be surprised by how flavoursome it is!

Watch out now for the shoots to start appearing, they'll be up in no time! Here's my garlic patch starting to sprout:

Don't worry if you haven't planted any yet, there's still some time left to get them in the ground. I will keep you up to date with how mine are growing and remind you later in the year when to stop watering and let the plants die back and also when to dig up the bulbs and hang them up to dry. For now though, sit back and relax and watch them grow.