One of the highlights of late winter in Toowoomba is the deciduous magnolia. I absolutely love the things. Their flower display has an air of exoticism that few trees can match, except perhaps for their cousins, the Bull Bay or evergeen magnolias.

Five years ago, Magnolia grandiflora and its offspring were the must-have plants of the moment. Hot shot designers like Jamie Durie were using them all over the place, and nearly every week, shows like Backyard Blitz used them as a feature tree. More than a few trees were snapped up by a gardening public willing to pay $30 or more for what was essentially a fashion statement in a 140mm pot.

But fashions change. In this new era of austerity, expensive little trees are less likely to loosen the purse strings and the evergreen magnolia has joined lots of other gardenworthy plants in a twilight zone of horticultural obscurity. To be honest, even I’m guilty of overlooking the plant. The main reason it’s even getting a run today is because of a road trip my wife and I made last week.

We took off for a couple of days to deliver fruit trees to a property at Kentucky, a village at the southern end of the New England Tablelands in NSW. Sitting between 900 and 1400 metres above sea level, New England is famous for having one of the coldest climates in Australia. Deciduous trees and conifers dominate the landscape, but while driving through the main street of Uralla I spotted a large evergreen tree out of the corner of my eye. When I slowed down for a look, I was surprised to see that the tree was a mature Magnolia grandiflora.

The discovery shouldn’t have been that much of a shock. The Bull Bay magnolia is actually quite a cold tolerant plant. Native to the southern United States, in the wild it often grows in the company of deciduous trees such as liquidambars, tupelos and oaks. In a garden situation it can be found growing as far north as Chicago and British Columbia. We’re talking about one of the oldest exotic plants in cultivation here – Magnolia grandiflora has been grown successfully in Britain since 1726.

The species can be a large tree to about 20 metres tall. There are some handsome plants scattered around the Toowoomba area, particularly in older parks and gardens. A real beauty can be seen growing just outside the cemetery at Cabarlah, but for the average garden, one of the cultivars is a wiser choice. There are around half a dozen to choose from, and all bear the “grand”, heavily-scented white flowers as the species during late summer and autumn.

The variety that caught designers’ imaginations five years ago is ‘Little Gem’. I’ve got one growing in my garden, and while the plant might eventually reach a height of about five metres, it appears to be in no hurry to get there. The foliage is something else: glossy and dark green on top, brown and felty in texture underneath.

If you’re after a faster grower than Little Gem, ‘St Mary’ is a good choice. It will get to about six metres in height and is a more open plant. And if the brown leaf texture doesn’t appeal there is a new variety on the available called ‘Greenback’. The pick of the lot, however, is an oldie called ‘Exmouth’. This exceptionally stately tree will grow a bit bigger than the previous plants to about 10 metres tall but it has a conical shape and will only get to five metres in diameter.

Exmouth was grown by Sir John Colliton in a Devon village during the early 18th century. You might say that Colliton had an entrepreneurial spirit. He leased his tree out to local nurserymen on a rotational basis, collecting five guineas (about $750 in today’s terms) for each young rooted tree sold. He wasn’t however, very astute. The tree was accidentally cut down in 1794.

Evergreen magnolias do best in a loamy soil, but they’re very tolerant of a broad range of conditions. They handle the black soil of the plains and the red soil of the plateaus equally well. You’ll need to water plants regularly during dry spells to get them established, but after the first year or two no supplemental moisture is necessary. Pests are a non event. I’ve yet to find barely a blemished leaf on my Little Gem.

The famous plant explorer Ernest “Chinese” Wilson called magnolias “aristocrats with ancient lineage”. His description was spot on. Ignore the fact that Magnolias aren’t trendy any more. Classic beauty never goes out of style.

First published in the Toowoomba Chronicle 6th August 2011. Photo by Justin Russell, Magnolia ‘Little Gem’, The Laurels, Warwick.

At this time of the year, when the lawn’s stopped growing (finally!) and the mornings are white with frost, I feel like going into a state of semi-dormancy as well. In some ways I envy gardeners in the northern hemisphere whose backyards are blanketed in snow for most of winter leaving little option but to take the entire season off. Here, of course, it’s not quite as drastic. We can brave the cold, and in reality, there is still a long list of jobs that could be done.

My advice is to put the list in the top drawer, and look at it only occasionally. You might like to get stuck into a few warming tasks, like hard landscaping and digging compost into your vegie patch ahead of spring, but there’s an opportunity over the next month or two to spend some time in quiet reflection and in my view, it’s too good to miss.

Few of us spend enough time reflecting. For the perpetually busy, reflection is a complete no-go zone, but even for those of us who’ve sought to carve out time for such pursuits, reflection can be difficult to accommodate. In my experience though, it’s a priceless discipline. Each winter, whenever the opportunity arises, I’ll make time to either sit and do nothing but think, or more likely, evaluate the seasons just passed in my garden and make plans for the warmer months (and sometimes years) ahead.

Often a book or two gets pulled off my shelf. I’m one of these silly people who always has a pile of half read books on the go, so I prefer to get stuck into them, but it’s amazing how often I return to my old favourites. They’ve become a bit like trusted companions, full of hard won wisdom and sound advice, and when I need it, an inspirational passage or two to get my gardening juices flowing again.

Monty Don’s The Organic Gardener (sold in the UK and US as The Complete Gardener, a better title in my opinion) is probably the most referred-to book in my library. Don is a long-time gardening columnist and the much loved host of the BBC’s Gardeners’ World program, the equivalent of our Gardening Australia. He writes beautifully, but is, first and foremost, a compulsive domestic gardener.

In 1991 Monty and wife Sarah retreated to a tumble down Tudor house set amid a two acre field in Herefordshire. The couple’s jewellery business, which once boasted Princess Diana among a stellar client list, had gone spectacularly bust, and Don was severely depressed. Gardening became a kind of redemption. In two decades, with countless hours of sweat and labour, the couple transformed a derelict, flood prone field into one of Britain’s most recognisable gardens.

In The Organic Gardener, Don offers a comprehensive overview of his gardening philosophies, and outlines the various techniques he uses for growing a wide array of edible and ornamental plants. The book makes a compelling case for organic growing. Yet Don’s techniques are solidly traditional. In the book you’ll learn how to tie-in raspberry canes, and make your own seed raising mix. You’ll find advice on planting hedges, and rotation plans for the vegie patch. Don covers a heap of ground in The Organic Gardener, and the words are beautifully illustrated by superb photography. It’s a brilliant book.

The second most cherished book in my collection is Dr Louis Glowinski’s The Complete Book of Fruit Growing in Australia. Dr Glowinski is a Melbourne GP, who doubles as a passionate edible gardener and is a member of the International Rare Fruit Council. As such, his book is soundly based on a combination of personal experience, scientific enquiry, and a healthy dose of historical fact.

Unlike Monty Don’s book, illustrations are scant in The Complete Book of Fruit Growing in Australia, but the text is wonderfully composed, offering comprehensive advice on all aspects of fruit growing culture, and for a very wide range of temperate and subtropical varieties. Dr Glowinski covers everything from A to Z, apples to Zizyphus (jujubes). And he’s never short of a joke. After all, he says, “growing fruit is a pleasure, not a duty”.

So the next time someone criticises you for sitting next to the heater, when there’s work to be done outside, my advice is to do this: Tell them that Justin, the bloke who writes about gardening for The Chronicle and (hopefully!) knows what he’s talking about, is probably doing the same thing at this very minute. Make the most of winter, and its opportunities for reflection.

First published in the Toowoomba Chronicle 25th June 2011.

It’s boom times for gardening on the box. In contrast to the recent dearth of garden related programmes, we’ve now got a few to choose from, and hopefully, there’s more on the way. For the funky urban gardener who dislikes Toowoomba’s roundabouts as much as I do, there is Guerilla Gardeners. It’s all a bit staged and not really in the spirit of the guerrilla gardening movement, but interesting enough.

Then there’s the old staples, Better Homes and Gardens, which I find cheesy to the core, and my favourite, Gardening Australia. I was interested to see how Aunty was going to handle the departure of “Pete”, and though Stephen Ryan seems a bit stilted and plant obsessed, he’s making a reasonable fist of it. The show itself remains great, offering a nice mix of earthiness, practicality, and haul your backside off the sofa motivation. And yes, my kids still do a little dance when the theme music kicks in.

But for pure inspiration, it’s impossible to overlook a new 10-part series on ABC1 titled Around the World in 80 Gardens. Presented by English garden writer Monty Don, this beautifully filmed programme is part travelogue, part cultural exploration, and part horticultural odyssey. Every continent excluding Antarctica is visited and literally 80 individual gardens are featured in some depth.

I ought to confess that I’m a fan of Monty Don. He’s my favourite garden writer, and as a presenter, I reckon he shares Peter Cundall’s enthusiasm for gardening and life, albeit with a more erudite turn of phrase. So it should come as no surprise that Around the World in 80 Gardens has me absolutely hooked, and though the series or Monty isn’t without fault, it is surely one of the most fascinating gardening shows ever to grace the small screen.

The reason I’ve enjoyed it so much is largely due to Monty’s premise behind the series. He sets out to learn about a country’s culture through its gardens. This reflects his philosophy that a garden is made by a person (or persons), and it follows that the most interesting thing about a garden is its creator, not the plants within it. This is a hard pill to swallow for a plant nut like me, but Monty’s right – gardens are social and cultural constructs – and the best aren’t necessarily those that are technically brilliant, but those that clearly reflect the personalities and beliefs of their creators.

My interest was really piqued by last week’s episode. Monty visited Australia. I’ve got no idea how he chose the gardens to be featured, but Mr Don toured Kennerton Green, Vladimir Sitta’s modernist Sydney garden, Alice Springs Desert Park and Cruden Farm among others. Judging from his commentary, Monty came in search of the genuine Australian garden, but I got the sense that he went away a bit mystified.

He found Kennerton Green beautiful, but felt that it resembled a typical English country garden. At Cruden Farm he was charmed by Dame Elisabeth Murdoch, but he seemed fairly nonplussed by the angular and confronting Sitta garden. The garden that got him most enthused was The Garden Vineyard on the Mornington Peninsula. Monty particularly appreciated the combination of plants, and was especially taken by the formal treatment of Australian natives.

What I found most fascinating about the show was that in essence, it was an appraisal of Australian gardening from an outsider’s perspective. The verdict: though Monty’s visit was limited in scope, I’m not sure that we came off all that well. I got the impression that Monty perceived Australian gardening culture as a bit juvenile, still yearning for the green fields of the mother country and afraid to grow up.

Is he right? Do we still garden like we live in England? Do we kid ourselves into believing that ours isn’t a changing climate ravaged by a decade of drought? Do we use native plants well, or is our default style one of “the bush in my backyard”?  And the big kahuna, should our gardens be created as imitations of nature or is it okay that they exist as creations in their own right?

I for one hope Monty keeps the big questions flowing. Around the World in 80 Gardens makes very worthwhile viewing, and serves as a reminder that though we live in challenging times, the answer to many of the big issues can be found right under our nose – in the garden.

First published in the Toowoomba Chronicle, 2nd May 2009. Photo of Kennerton Green by Allison Green via flickr.