Backyard and Outdoor Living Issue #48 - 2020

Welcome to the new-look Backyard magazine, which comes with a whole other magazine — Outdoor Living — at the end. Just flip it around and upside down and voila! And don’t worry, two for the price of one doesn’t mean you’re missing out on your Backyard favourites. We’ve still got the latest news, products and books covered, as well as beautiful garden design projects for inspiration and growing tips as well as a weekend project to keep you busy. We’re also casting an expert eye over that perennial flower favourite, the rose, with Gavin Woods picking his top five. In our special features this issue we examine waterwise veggies — those that are the most drought-tolerant and how you can grow them successfully. We’re also looking at decks, pergolas and patios —…

AN AUSTRALIAN GARDEN PHILIP COX THAMES & HUDSON | $70 Forty years ago, renowned architect Philip Cox, along with a group of like-minded friends, bought 80 hectares of land as a private retreat and conservation exercise. This stunning picture-led book is a celebration of the beautiful and diverse landscape that resulted. Through fantastic photography, discover lakes and ponds, bush and gullies, pavilions and garden rooms, accompanied by enchanting descriptions that dispense with flowery hyperbole and simply tell the tale as it should be told. From indigenous flora done right, to stunning sculptures and unique art pieces, there’s so much to enjoy in these pages. A real highlight is the beautiful “branch waves” on page 96. This is a coffee table book to treasure. INCREDIBLE EDIBLES MATTHEW BIGGS PENGUIN BOOKS | $39.99 If you’re going to grow your…

BRING THE OUTSIDE INSIDE-OUT Think you need soil in order to grow plants? Think again. Designer and plant lover Eran Zarhi teamed up with his entrepreneurial friend Elad Burko to launch the “inside out” hydroponic Terraplanter that uses only water, diffusing it slowly from the inner chamber, through the porous ceramic material, to sustain the plant growing on the outside. Eran was inspired by the way plants grow naturally in rainforests and similarly humid environments. Still in crowdfund stage (on indiegogo.com), the cute, innovative piece is made with 100 per cent natural materials and can be used over and over again, for growing plants as diverse as moss, ferns and grass, and even a Venus fly trap! terraplanter.com UNDERGROUND MARVEL Composting has been around for donkey’s years, of course, but perhaps this latest…

HYBRID TEA Diana Princess of Wales: a big beauty of cream and peach, raised by the acclaimed Dr Keith Zary and released by Jackson & Perkins in the USA in 1998. A prolific bloomer of classic hybrid tea style blooms, my plant is close to our back door and never ceases to bring us joy whenever we leave the house. An upright grower of approximately 1.5m, it has a mild tea rose fragrance. FLORIBUNDA Miss Jane: an exciting new release bred in Australia by Richard and Ruth Walsh, released this year by Wagner’s Roses. I first saw this rose in the Queensland State Rose Garden at Toowoomba and was blown away by the sheer beauty of its pale-pink bloom clusters. Awarded a Certificate of Merit in trials conducted at the National Rose Trial…

There’s no way around it. Vegetable gardens are water guzzlers, especially in the early stages when young plants are working hard to become established. Even after that, edible plants need lots of water, not to mention sun, which has a tendency to cause water to evaporate! That doesn’t mean, however, that you can’t use your water wisely — even conserve water — when growing veggies. “Whether your veggie garden is in-ground or above ground, it’s all about getting the basics right,” says Steve Warner, landscape designer and director of OUTHOUSE design. “The best way to have a waterwise veggie patch is by ensuring your plants have all they need to thrive, so they don’t have to rely solely on the water you give them. “Hardy plants become hardy because they’re gaining support…

“When it comes to designing the layout of your plants in your veggie garden, you have to group together plants from similar plant families and those with compatible water requirements,” horticulturist Glenice Buck says. “For example, lettuce, corn, celery, cabbage and cucumbers all need more water than, say, carrots, beetroots, onions and parsnips. By grouping these together you’ll know how much water each area of the vegetable garden will require and you won’t waste water on plants that don’t need it.”…