Gardening Australia

Stephen's Perennial Border - Ask It/Solve It - The Vegie Patch - Understanding Plant Uses - Leonie's Pest Remedies - Habitat Gardeners (21x45)

: 08, 2011

SUMMER SERIES TRANSCRIPT EPISODE 45 STEPHEN RYAN: Hi. Welcome to Gardening Australia’s Summer Series where we have some of the stories from 2010 that were the most popular with you at home. This week, Jerry explores a garden that provides habitat for wildlife, just kilometres from Brisbane’s CBD. And Tino takes a look at some different types of garlic. TINO CARNEVALE: The variety I’ll be planting today is the ‘Purple Stripe’ because I find the hard neck types do a lot better in a cooler climate. STEPHEN RYAN: Perennial borders look great at this time of the year, but back in winter, this one required quite a bit of maintenance. STEPHEN'S PERENNIAL BORDER Stephen Ryan STEPHEN RYAN: Traditionally, the perennial border was somewhere that you came in and cut everything to the ground for the winter, certainly in Europe where they get heavy snows, this is probably a practical way of detailing with it. But in our milder climates, it’s nice to leave some structural plants standing and to come in gradually throughout the year and remove things as they collapse. So I’m going to start with my Arctotis. Arctotis is a fantastic South African ground cover daisies. They come in a range of colours from yellow to burgundy and red. Mine’s a wonderful ‘magentary’ colour and it will flower all summer. They cope well with sun, they’re very drought tolerant, but they are quite vigorous and if I don’t take complete control, this plant will take over my whole perennial border in only a year or two. This stake has a very important job in my garden. I put these in wherever I’ve put some special or precious bulb so that when I’m doing jobs like this, I won’t stand on them or stick my fork or spade straight through them. Most of this stuff will go off to the compost heap, but there’s a great opportunity here to create some new plants. The Arctotis has rooted as the stems have gone along the ground. So all I need to do is b