Kangaroo Grass as a Landscaping Plant

In Stefan Leppert's  book  "Ornamental Grasses ... Wolfgang Oehme and the New American Garden" it is claimed that Karl Foerster, the German landscaper who, in the 1930's, pioneered the use of ornamental grasses as an element of  garden design, said that "Grasslich eine Garten ohne Graser" ... "Ghastly is a garden without grasses".

Indeed.

Australian designers have followed this well-established overseastrend and now make extensive use of exotic grasses such as the Japanese Miscanthus and natives such as the Tussock Grass Poa labillardieri in our gardens.  Kangaroo Grass, Themeda australis, with its magical russet seed heads, is not however used as frequently as it should be in our landscaping.  That needs to change.

Best Buxus Variety for Hedges in Australia.

Box, or Buxus, is one of the most useful plants for hedging. It has been used for at least two thousand years and one reason is that rabbits, deer, sheep and cattle won't eat it .  Kangaroos and wallabies will also ignore it.  Magic.  So we spent Australia Day propagating them from cutting. We aim to produce a thousand new plants each year.  We do love Skippy but we also love gardens.  This way we can have both.

There are many varieties of Buxus.  In Australia the most commonly planted varieties are Japanese Box, Buxus microphylla and English Box, Buxus sempervirens.  Of these two, English Box is far superior, requiring much less water.  Unfortunately many Australians seem to prefer to Japanese Box presumably because it is grows more quickly and Australian like quick results.  But in my opinion this is crap thinking.  Not only does Buxus microphylla  require more water, but it will rapidly look very dodgy unless pruned frequently. Buxus sempervirens is slower growing and will look just fine with only one or two prunings a year.  The dwarf form of this, Buxus sempervirens suffriticosa, is best suited to hedges or topiary which need to be be kept very small and very neat.

Another variety, much less common, but worth using is the Balearic Box, Buxus balearica,  native to the beautiful islands of Ibiza, Minorca and Majorca.  As can be seen in the photograph, it has larger leaves than other Box varieties. It is incredibly tough, grows into a tallish tree and handles pruning well so is suited to hedging and topiary.  We have propagated fifty of these as an experiment. They will be planted out into The Horse Paddock as part of our collection of Buxus varieties.

Catmint as a Kangaroo-proof Groundcover

Years ago I split up a clump of Catmint which had been growing in The Old Cottage Garden.  I figured it had grown there for over a century and had survived with no attention so it would be worth trying as a low maintenance ground cover.

I moved it out into the unprotected area of our gardens, planting it along the base of the stone wall in The Forecourt.  This area gets no attention at all, no watering, no anything.  But would our mob of kangaroos and wallabies demolish it?

Well, the catmint is still there.  In fact it has spread and seems happy to colonize this position.  So it can be added to that small list of things that the local marsupials don't fancy. We will now give it a helping hand and split it up, spreading it along the entire wall. The bees and butterflies are loving too and after a summer storm the fragrance is heaven.

Banksia "Red Rover". Someone Stuffed Up.

Banksia "Red Rover", a red-flowered variety of  the well-known Banksia ericifolia, is a relatively recent introduction, having been accepted for registration on  5th November, 2010.  Registration apparently followed  extensive testing since the plants introduction in 2004. But there seems to be confusion about this plant.

The label on this one, bought this week from our local Bunnings, states it will grow to 10 metres tall and the same wide.  That is very large for a Banksia and probably too large for most gardens. But the description posted by Australian Cultivar Registration Authority which I assume was submitted by the original growers, Rod & Robyn Parsons, as part of their application for naming rights, describes Red Rover as a "dwarf cultivar growing to 2 metres".  So someone is wrong. 

This type of confusion is disappointing and will not encourage people to use new Australian plants such as this.  We do have wonderful native plants in Australia and we should explore their use in garden design, but our horticultural industry seems to be a bit slack and lacking in professionalism. The hit or miss approach is not good.  Smarten up please.

What's Blooming this Week?

The Swamp banksia, Banksia robur, is a tough and gorgeous thing.  With over fifty bushes in flower right now in The Water Garden there are blooms at every stage of development from unopened buds like the one shown above through to last season's flowers, now dried but still delightful.

 

For more on The Water Garden click here

Notes from the Garden Library #32

Sericourt near Paris, created by Yves Gosse de Gorre, is a notable contemporary  garden with a reputation that continues to grow as time goes by. The remarkable topiary, which was highlighted by Jake Hobson in his recent book "The Art of Creative Pruning",  caught my attention so I went online and ordered a book written by the man who created the garden.  

It is in French.  "Sagesse & Deraison au Jardin"  translates according to Google as "Wisdom and Unreasonabless in the Garden."   Right.

But the pictures tell the story.

In the Gully Garden

 

I have no idea what these flowers are.

But The Gully Garden is full of them right now.  They thrive in the moist, mulchy soil there.

Can someone identify them? UPDATE Jan 24: Nicholas Vale, from Garden Life has identified this as Pratia.