In July, it can be tempting to believe that the garden has become a cold, drab, lifeless wasteland dominated by bare branches and frost-bleached grass. I’ve fallen for the myth lots of times, but in reality, it’s simply not true. When I actually slow down and really pay attention, I see a garden bursting with energy and colour. In this week’s Secret Garden I want to give a snapshot of what’s happening in my garden during July, with the hope that you’ll be inspired to see your own winter garden in a new light.

We’ll start in my favourite part of the garden – the vegie patch. Come winter, spring, summer or autumn, the patch is the beating heart of Thistlebrook. This is true in a physical sense, because the patch is located roughly in the centre of the most productive part of the property (right next door to the chooks and espalier orchard). But more importantly, the vegie patch brings to life our ideas of what good gardening, and good living, is all about.

The vegie patch feeds my family all year round. Winter moves at a slower pace than spring and summer, of course, but there’s still something to harvest every day. The two carrot varieties I sowed back in early autumn, Lubyana and St Valery, have been feeding us for months and there are still enough roots in the ground for a few weeks yet. The bed of leafy greens I sowed with my daughter in March is still providing fresh leaves of rocket, bok choy, mizuna, lettuce, spinach, and lots of beautiful Tuscan, and Red Russian kale. I’m growing the latter for the first time and it’s a winner – tender and delicious and quietly beautiful in the garden.

The brassicas are coming along well. A row of broccoli is sprouting dozens of side shoots, extending the harvest, and an adjacent row of purple cauliflower is big and tall and starting to form a startling violet coloured head. Next to the cauliflower is some young purple sprouting broccoli, a row of cabbage and finally, a row of wombok, now ready to be picked. All of the plants are thriving in soil that previously grew potatoes, and was enriched with lots of home made compost, some lime, and a decent scattering of pelletised chook manure.

My garlic is powering along. In addition to bulbs I saved from last spring, I’m experimenting with some heirloom varieties this year and so far, the results are good. The bulbs were tiny when they arrived in the post, and I was worried they wouldn’t grow. But garlic is tougher than people give it credit for and every clove bar one sprouted. I can’t wait for harvest in November. Nearby, in a permanent bed, is my prized rhubarb. The variety I grow is called Highfields Ever Red, and true to it’s name, produces glowing scarlet stems almost all year round before dying back to the crown in mid-winter. This year it’s still going strong.

The potted Eureka lemon tree, which has struggled along for a few years in the face of drought, frost, flood and the beautiful, but very hungry, orchard swallowtail butterfly caterpillars, is finally bearing fruit. Not a lot, and quite under-size compared to my neighbours’ lemons. But all fruit, whether abundant or scarce, is welcome in this household and I’m looking forward to this tree’s first harvest. A better performer is the blood orange. It’s going gangbusters for a young tree, and is covered with half ripe oranges that I’m hoping will survive July’s hard frosts.

There’s much more to this garden than just edible plants, and though flowers are scarce in July, observant visitors still manage to spot the odd beauty. Forget-me-nots planted beneath and old flowering peach are still producing their electric blue flowers, a red grevillea and a neighbouring teucrium are making a brilliant combination and out the back, along the rear boundary fence, a Mutabilis rose hedge continues to be a show stopper. This variety needs space, but it ranks as one of the most garden-worthy plants I’ve ever grown.

Now if that all sounds a bit too idyllic, take heart. Thistlebrook is hardly the perfect garden that some people imagine it to be. And to be honest, I wouldn’t have it any other way. Perfect gardens are an illusion, often created by a hyper-dedicated property owner or a small army of gardeners working day in and day out to create something that for most of us, is out of reach. Give me a garden that’s rough around the edges, but productive and beautiful, over a micro-managed show piece any day of the week. Let’s aim to keep it real.

First puublished in the Toowoomba Chronicle 2nd July 2011. Photo by Justin Russell, forget-me-not flowers.

Being a Dad is one of the great joys of my life. Child raising isn’t without its challenges, of course, but neither is it without some happy by-products. As a parent, I’ve had the pleasure of reading lots of kid’s books and watching the occasional kid’s movie. The best of these are brilliant works of art, and while I’ve got a soft spot for oldies like Mary Poppins (love the chimney sweep scene) my favourite so far is the 2006 film version of EB White’s classic fable, Charlotte’s Web.

One of the major themes of the movie, or at least the theme that gets telegraphed most insistently, is the idea of finding the miraculous in the commonplace. The closing song leaves little doubt about the “ordinary miracle” concept, and while the same theme is present in the book, EB White takes a less sentimental approach.

The novel’s title character, a spider named Charlotte, befriends a runt pig and saves him from the axe by writing a series of well chosen adjectives in her web above the pig’s pen. Charlotte describes Wilbur the runt as “some pig”, “terrific”, and “radiant”, and by the time the word “humble” appears in the spider’s web one morning toward the end of the book, crowds are flocking to witness the miracle first hand. As a consequence, her friend’s bacon is spared from the smoke house, and Wilbur lives to see winter.

What fascinates me about EB White’s story is the suggestion that people are drawn to the extraordinary sight of words written in spider silk, yet they overlook the real miracle – the web itself. There’s nothing grand about the sight of a dew laden web, catching sunlight on an autumn morning, but the incredible strength of the threads and the precision of the structure makes a spider’s web one of nature’s truest marvels. Every time we walk past such wonders without a second thought, we do ourselves a disservice.

Gardeners claim to love the natural world, but we’re as guilty of overlooking ordinary, everyday miracles as much as anyone. The problem stems from what amounts to a perpetual quest for the newest, the brightest, and the boldest. It’s exacerbated by some of the big garden centres and the broader horticulture industry, both of which are obsessed with the development of new plants with showier flowers that become further and further removed from their wild ancestors. We miss far more than spider webs.

I think there’s plenty we can learn from children. A child development expert could explain why, but I’ve noticed that kids are innately aware of, and get incredible joy from, the small details in their surroundings. When my kids pick a flower for their mum, they usually choose something insignificant, and unspectacular. When they appreciate autumn colour, it’s through a single leaf, not an entire tree. When they pick a piece of fruit from the garden they rarely salivate over the largest specimen. In a child’s world, little things are extraordinary.

One of the plants my kids enjoy the most is the common sweet violet, Viola odorata. We’re growing it as a groundcover on either side of semi-shaded path leading to our back door, where it also adjoins the kid’s sandpit. When the plant is in bloom from early winter to spring, the flowers get picked constantly for everything from making perfume to decorating volcanoes to sprinkling over miniature ponds. There are hundreds of other flowers to choose from in the garden. But it’s a purple wonder the size of a thumbnail that my children gravitate to.

I share the kid’s enthusiasm for violas. My favourite cool season flower is the humble Johnny Jump Up, Viola tricolour, a plant that earned its common name because of a tendency to self seed and pop up spontaneously in the garden. Its other common name is heartsease. This refers to the plant’s historical use as a medicinal herb, but I think it perfectly suits Viola tricolour’s ability to inspire cheer on the bleakest days of mid-winter. I also grow the larger flowered pansies (which are viola hybrids), but for me, a clump of happy looking Johnny Jump Ups is pure gold.

The 19th century American philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote that “the invariable mark of wisdom is the ability to see the miraculous in the common”. I’ll leave it for others to judge whether I’m wise or not, but as a gardener, and a dad, I think it’s vital that I learn to see with eyes attuned to nature’s common glories. If I can pass such wisdom onto my kids, and they pass it on to their own children, I’ll die a very contented man.

First published in the Toowoomba Chronicle 4th June 2011. Photo by Justin Russell – common violet, Viola odorata.

St Patrick’s Day has come and gone for another year and a question beckons: did you get your sweet peas in? March 17 is the traditional date to sow Lathyrus odoratus seed on the Darling Downs, but in truth, sweet pea seed can be sown anytime in early to mid autumn, and if you miss the boat this season, you even get a second chance by sowing in early spring.

Nonetheless, St Pat’s Day is as good a reminder as any, so last Thursday afternoon you would have found my wife Kylie, brilliant woman that she is, racing against dusk to get her seeds in the ground. She’s hoping for a display the equal of what we had last November, but I fear that it ain’t gonna happen. The unusually wet spring of 2010 contributed to the lushest growth I’ve ever seen on sweet peas, to the point that our four metre long row of plants grew so tall that they almost doubled their six foot trellis. Flowers appeared in genuine profusion, and the resulting scent was mind-bendingly intoxicating.

Our garden is a joint passion, and therefore, a joint effort, yet Kylie doesn’t often get recognised for the many hours of work she puts in alongside me. So it was nice to hear visitors complimenting her on the sweet peas, and even asking for some tips on how to grow them.

Kylie starts, as all clever gardeners should, with the soil. What you’re aiming for with sweet peas (and edible peas for that matter) is a well worked soil that’s full of organic matter but not overly rich in nitrogen. Too fertile, and you’ll get lots of lush foliage growth at the expense of flowers. The solution is compost. A month or so prior to sowing Kylie adds a decent barrow load of home made compost to the sweet pea bed, as well as generous handful of lime per square metre to balance out any acidity. Some blood and bone will help provide slow release nutrients without making the soil too fertile.

Her next tip is to use saved seed. As the sweet pea season comes to a close each year we leave some pea pods on the vines to dry out. These are harvested and stored in a cool, dry place until autumn, before being soaked in a bowl of water the night before St Patrick’s Day. Nothing special is added to the water. The soaking alone helps the seeds absorb moisture, and by the following day, they’ve swelled up and are ready to go in the ground.

I should note that to save your own seed, you’ll need to grow an open pollinated, heirloom variety of sweet pea. If you try to save seed from a hybrid, the offspring won’t grow true to type, which simply means that you’ll get a bunch of seedlings that revert to either of the original hybrid’s parent varieties. Kylie mostly grows ‘Matucana’, an old variety from the 1920’s that bears bicoloured violet and maroon flowers with a knockout scent. The Diggers Club is a good source of heirloom sweet pea seed.

Beware the modern sweet peas. These are often sold in punnets at garden centres, and while they produce showy flowers, many are completely devoid of scent. It seems completely stark raving bonkers to me, that plant breeders would deliberately breed scent out of a plant bearing the species name “odoratus” but that’s plant breeders for you. As English garden writer Monty Don says, a sweet pea with no smell is like food without flavour.

Once you’ve got the seeds in the ground, be it on March 17 or whenever, it’s important not to overwater. If the seeds were soaked and the soil watered upon sowing, there is plenty of moisture for germination to occur, so hold off with the water until the seedlings appear in about seven days. As your seedlings grow, it will probably be necessary to tie them loosely to the trellis to get them heading in the right direction until the tendrils get a grip. Keep them powering along with regular moisture and a monthly application of liquid fish emulsion.

If you planted in autumn, you’ll be enjoying flowers by late spring or early summer. Don’t waste such special blooms by leaving them all on the plant – Kylie harvests the flowers regularly for use inside the house. She gives lots away to friends. The key is to just keep picking, because the more you pick, the longer the plants will flower. Eventually though, flowering will cease. This is your cue to let the pods dry out, in preparation for another magnificent display of colour and scent next year.

First published in the Toowoomba Chronicle 26th March 2010. Photo by Justin Russell, Matucana sweet peas, Thistlebrook, October 2010.

Unlike the gradual unfurling that takes place in southern Australia, spring in Toowoomba is irresistibly intense. One week everything remains snugly tucked away for winter, then the first bit of warmer weather hits and BANG, the whole city erupts into a spectacle of nature at its most exuberant.

This year the weather has been topsy-turvey. Warm weather arrived early with record maximums in August, then disappeared for a couple of weeks, so the whole spring show looks like it will be more fleeting than normal. My tip is to turn off the telly, de-park your backside from the sofa, and head outside for a healthy dose of vitamin D. It’s the diamond anniversary of the Carnival of Flowers. Let’s be proud of it. A visit to one of Toowoomba’s private display gardens or public parks is better than anything you’re likely to see on the box this September.

Laurel Bank is one of Toowoomba’s oldest public parks. It is the masterpiece of Samuel George Stephens, who owned the land, designed the park’s layout and donated it to the city in 1932. Mr Stephens was known locally as “the man of flowers” and his only proviso in donating the land was that it not be used as a sporting facility. Sure enough, the most strenuous activity within Laurel Bank is croquet and the odd game of park cricket. Come spring however, and the park erupts in a floral spectacular of which the man of flowers would be positively chuffed.

Alongside extensive bedding displays are magnificent cool climate trees like oaks, ginkgos and Japanese maples. In September they smother themselves with fresh lime foliage, setting off the formal displays of annuals, roses and perennials like delphinium and poppies. The park’s wisteria walk is absolutely magnificent in spring, while the Scented Gardens are a delight, featuring lavender, salvia, fennel and other aromatic plants. Laurel Bank is my favourite Toowoomba park.

The State Rose Garden in Newtown Park is one of the city’s relatively unknown gems. On the many occasions I get asked questions about roses, I generally suggest that people go and have a look at the varieties growing in the State Rose Garden. The response though is usually the same – “where’s that”. Situated on the eastern side of Newtown Park adjoining Holberton Street, the State Rose Garden features more than 1500 rose varieties carefully selected to match the Toowoomba climate.

There are lots of David Austins and hybrid teas, all laid out in a within box-edged beds, but my favourites are the old roses and these are well represented within the garden. Old teas and china roses do really well on the Downs, and two worth looking out for in the gardens are ‘Lady Hillingdon’, a tall voluptuous tea, and ‘Papa Hemeray’, a delightful little China. Also worth seeking out are ‘Carabella’ and ‘Titian’, bred in Toowoomba by the late rosarian Frank Reithmuller.

Queen’s Park Gardens in Lindsay Street can be rightly considered Toowoomba’s beating heart in spring. The gardens feature the most magnificent floral displays during Carnival week and are next door to the venue for the Flower, Food and Wine Festival. Of all the plants on display the absolute queen is the tulip. It’s interesting to see them planted amongst more untamed, wilder looking annuals like sweet peas. The combination of the tulip’s refined elegance and the heady scent and vigorous growth of the sweet pea is an energetic contrast.

Spring Bluff Railway Station, located just north of Toowoomba, is regarded as one of Australia’s most picturesque railway stations. When you visit it’s not hard to see why. The colonial buildings, old carriages and railway sidings lend a quaint charm to the place, and in spring the terraced gardens blaze with cheery colour.

There’s a long tradition of flower gardening at Spring Bluff. In 1914 Queensland Railways launched a competition to encourage railway staff to beautify the station and grow their own vegies. It seems that the idea stuck – a permanent gardener now lives in one of the cottages and spends the bulk of the year preparing the spring display. Annuals are the mainstay, though the gardens feature plenty of blossom trees like peaches and plums. The whole effect is quite magical.

So to the Carnival of Flowers I say happy 60^th birthday. Congratulations to all the professional and amateur gardeners alike who put in hours of work to make Toowoomba a sight for sore eyes every September, come drought and economic downturn, and long may the Carnival live. Spring is worth celebrating, and I can’t think of a better venue than Toowoomba’s parks and gardens.

First published in The Chronicle, 19th September 2009. Photo by Justin Russell.

The weather appears to be getting odder by the day. Yesterday, we had a warm day of persistent north-westerly winds, followed by an evening shower, which was in turn followed by a morning frost. It felt like winter suddenly morphed into summer, and then switched back to winter in the space of 24 hours. Generally speaking though (if it’s possible to generalise with the weather any more), an early spring is underway. It feels as though the sap isn’t just rising, but exploding.

My thoughts at this point in the seasonal cycle invariably turn to two of the year’s great delights: blossom and annuals. To me, these are the elements that make spring on the Downs such a joyous event. You’d have to be living under a rock to miss them. Blossom froths about all over the place like a happy giant bubble-bath. The annual displays, though on a smaller scale than they once were, are simply a joy to behold. My favourite local spring garden is the aptly named Spring Bluff. It always brings to mind images of a really loud plant party, and to me it’s so utterly joyous that I’d dare anyone to drive back up the range feeling gloomy.

For all their excitement though, annual “bedding displays” aren’t the most environmentally friendly form of gardening available. To produce a top flight display annual plants need regular feeding, and copious amounts of water. You can get away with less of each, but the display won’t be as spectacular, and to me the main reason for growing annuals is for a big bold splash of colour.

The other issue with traditional annual displays is that they require an inordinate amount of work. By the time you consider the soil preparation, the planting, the watering, the feeding, the weeding and the deadheading to prolong the flowering period, you’re looking at many, many hours of effort. Arch and Julie Roggeveen, whose Toowoomba garden has been crowned Carnival of Flowers Grand Champion on numerous occasions, once told me that they start working on their annuals in May, and by the time September rolls around, spend the evenings working under lights in order to get the garden ready for Carnival.

I’ve got no inclination to become a slave to my garden, but I love annuals, and spend the latter weeks of winter hungry for saturated colours. So what’s a bloke to do? Compromise, that’s what. I think I’ve found a way to enjoy a display of spring flowering annuals that is less extensive than those you might find in a show garden or at Spring Bluff, but still offers a welcome burst of spring cheer. The inspiration is the American landscape architect James van Sweden.

Van Sweden and his business partner Wolfgang Oehme have spent the last 30 years on a mission to remake the American garden. Their vision is one of refinement through reduction. Compared to conventional gardens, OVS gardens require less water, less chemicals and less maintenance. To achieve this they mimic the prairie landscapes of the American west, planting ornamental grasses and perennials in big drifts, avoiding the use of anything that needs excessive work. Lawns are a very minimal part of an Oehme/Van Sweden garden. Traditional displays of annual bedding plants are totally absent.

Instead, Oehme/Van Sweden display their annuals in large pots. Hardly seems revolutionary, I know, but their approach achieves a couple of things: reduced labour; and mobility. Unlike a fixed garden bed, it’s a simple enough exercise with all but the largest containers to pick them up, and move them to a more desirable location within the garden. This flexibility accommodates seasonal changes perfectly, and allows containers to be positioned for maximum impact.

The other thing that’s great about planting annuals in pots is the potential for creativity. There are endless combinations of plants and containers available, limited only by your imagination, and some stunning mixed displays can be created by combining annuals with foliage plants. When you get the combinations right, and position the container where it will form a distinct focal point, the impact can be far punchier than even the lairiest bedding display. Bedding displays have their place in public gardens. But if you’re pushed for time and space, you’ll achieve more for less by displaying your annuals in pots. Let your imagination run free.

First published in The Chronicle, 22nd August 2009. Photo by Justin Russell, Spring Bluff railway station