"Chookie" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Chookie wrote:

I'm going tomorrow! Looking forward to seeing Peter Olde's garden...

http://asgap.org.au/grevillea/

And this is what I bought. I was hunting for ground covers and grasses:

1 Ajuga australis (Austral bugle)

what colour's it? i love ajuga. i'm going to get black ajuga when i next see
it. it's lovely.

down a bit...

2 Scleranthus biflorus -- forms a soft, thick, pale-green carpet
3 Poa labillardieri (Common tussock-grass) h 0.5-1.3m, s 0.5-1.5m
2 *Themeda triandra, prostrate form (Kangaroo grass) -- Blue-green,
turning
purple in autumn
1 Scaevola aemula white form (Fan-flower)
1 Arthropodium strictum (Chocolate lily) 1m
1 Lomandra glauca (Mat-rush) 0.3m x 0.3m

And I've bought a few shrubs:

1 Babingtonia (formerly Baeckea) virgata dwarf -- I love the soft foliage
and
the tiny, scented flowers
1 Hymenosporum flavum 'Gold Nugget' (a native frangipani cultivar) --
Trying
again as the last one died due to too much afternoon sun! It has fragrant
cream-to-gold flowers in spring-early summer and is rather more
garden-sized
than its parent at 1m x 1m
Grevillea 'Pink Midget' -- to go under my pink-flowering bottle-brush
Telopea 'Sugar Plum' 3m x 3m -- yeah, yeah, I know... they say these new
cultivars are easier to grow...
Allocasuarina grampiana 3m x 1.5m -- I love casuarinas, especially the
sound
they make in the wind, but the regular kind are too big for my garden.
Thryptomene stenophylla h 0.7m -- another nice little shrub
3 Acacia cognata 'Limelight' -- lovely mop-top foliage

We had a wander around Peter Olde's garden, and heard from all the usual
suspects -- Don Burke, Angus Stewart, Merv Hodge et al -- very friendly
sort
of day. It was nice to see a few of us younger types with our kids too!

Peter Olde's garden had the advantages that come with 30 acres. You can
make
any and all kinds of garden with that sort of space! I can't with my 822
sq
m, even though that is a large block by Sydney standards. Not that I'm
bitter... much...

The garden is young and at this point is a stroll garden of specimens.
Its
greatest strength is the variation of foliage seen in the beds, which make
them enjoyable even at a time of year when many plants are not in flower,
and
simply the chance to see how various plants cope with basically no
additional
water. OTOH I didn't find it a very convincing garden in terms of design;
the
beds seem a bit plonked-down to me and the trees are stuck in the lawn a
la
Victorian specimen gardens. I'm more of the Edna Walling school of
thought
and prefer my trees and shrubs mixed together in beds, with clear lawns.
But maybe I'm just jealous...

maybe it's just a bad design & you're not at all jealous. :-) oh all right,
you are. ;-)

personally, i think trees in lawns looks tops!

but i'd want more in a garden than a bunch of stuff plonked in a lawn.
perhaps i am misunderstanding your description though.
kylie