Gardening

"I'm officially the worst gardener and I couldn't be more proud!"

The best blooms to gift and decorate with.

The green-fingered royal isn't afraid of getting stuck in.

It's time for a festive garden party...

Here's how you can cut back on water usage.

Our resident garden expert reveals how to keep your plants from being eaten alive by these nighttime creatures.

We've got all the top tips!

Even Costa was shocked!

She's certainly got a green thumb!

The royal has clearly put some thought into this...

How The Queen Mother’s spirit lives on in her grandson’s garden and Prince Charles’ delight at seeing Prince George and Princess Charlotte enjoy his patch of paradise.

Gardening guru Charlie Albone shares his best ever tips for sprucing up your garden to impress visitors over the holidays.

Plants looking a little drab? Selling Houses Australia's Charlie Albone could have the answer.

Indoor plants aren't just an interior trend, this study proves greenery is good for productivity, mental health, sleep and allergies.

The actress proves green is good when it comes to de-stressing.

These indoor plants will remove toxins from the air and make your home healthier.

The Weekly met Dame Elisabeth Murdoch's grand-daughters, Judy and Penny (pictured below left and right), and daughter Janet (middle) at her much-loved Cruden Farm.

Get outside and get gardening this week, with these fun gardening jobs.

The secret of a glorious garden is to know how much you really will do in your garden every week or fortnight.

The Weekly's Jackie French shares her top ideas to keep little wandering hands busy outside, this Easter weekend.

If you are longing to plant your vegies now, but the soil still feels cold when you sit on it, satisfy your gardening longings by planting out some spuds. Potatoes can be planted when the soil is still cold, as long as the soil isn’t frozen solid — if it is the potatoes will rot. […]

Jackie French shares her tale of the Nasty Rose Grower.

We've rounded up the best (almost) indestructible plants for patio pots.

There is nothing like a home-grown tomato, all warm from the sun and not just sweet but incredibly full of flavour. You just haven't eaten a tomato until you've had one straight from the garden!

Roses are very easy to grow. Even in a drought your roses will bloom and bloom.

Your basil questions answered by The Australian Women's Weekly's cooking team.

Before you rush to the nursery to buy every seedling, The Weekly lists the tasks you must complete to keep your garden growing.

Want to know what to plant this month? Look no further.

Make like celebrity chef, Maggie Beer and grow your own with The Weekly's guide to starting an orchard.

Australian horticulturist Phillip Johnson has claimed best in show at this year's Chelsea Flower Show with his ecologically sustainable Australian style billabong garden build in the heart of London.

Crab apple trees are hardier than a cherry tree and the blossom lasts longer in our harsher climate, too.

Not long ago, a 'good' backyard vegie garden had neat rows of cabbages and lots of tomatoes. There'd be carrots and green leafed silver beet and cucumbers, and green beans. Vegie gardens are changing.

Daylilies are so named because each flower only lasts for such a short time — sometimes truly only a day, sometimes for a few days.

The days are short, my toes are cold and all too many gardens are winter bare just now.

I think I had been writing gardening columns for about five years before a kindly subeditor pointed out that I couldn’t spell ‘fuchsia’. But grow them? Yes — any brown-fingered novice gardener can grow fuchsias. But exactly how? Fuchsia’s spelling comes from being named in honour of a German botanist called Herr Fuchs by a […]

Autumn is the gentle time in Australia. Spring can suddenly present you with a frost that withers the new shoots and tomatoes, but autumn is mostly blue skies. Autumn rain is usually gentle, the great thunder heads of summer gone. As I write this the persimmons are ripe, big fat orange fruit, and the leaves […]

Once there was a nymph called Daphne… actually the rest of the story about why she was turned into a sweetly scented bush is far too lascivious a story for a family website. But while other ancient Greek nymphs have faded into history, Daphne still blooms in our winter gardens — and her perfume is […]

Our 12-step guide to securing your garden in case of a storm.

“It’s called a ‘winter rose’ or hellebore,” she said. I looked down at the ankle-high plant with dull green leaves and even duller green-white flowers, then at the bright red real rose glory blooming on the fence. Then I looked back at the hellebore. “They call this a rose?” I said. My elderly friend looked […]

Summer is the time for kids in the garden — school holidays, and hopefully fun and fresh air instead of square eyes from watching too much TV. Today’s gardens though often don’t tempt kids outside. They’re neat designer gardens, created to impress onlookers, rather than with spots for cubbies, and trees with handy branches to […]

Year after year I wonder what I’ll put in our front flower bed, and year after year, after tossing up between stocks and delphiniums, or California poppies, or a froth of nemesia or dianthus, I plant the same again — petunias. They’re not always the same petunia. These days I go for the ‘spreading petunias’, […]

Spring is magic. Blossoms, scents, vases crowded with roses, grass green, skies blue … the real challenge of spring is how to most enjoy it. So here are the six top spring essentials. 1. A new gardening hat This isn’t a ‘go to the races hat’ or a celebrity fashion statement, but a good garden […]

Fed up with flavourless mass market lemons? The Weekly's gardening expert Jackie French tells you how to grow your own luscious lemons.

Proper vegie gardens are long neat beds, with rows of cabbages or lettuce and obediently staked tomatoes. They can look both ludicrous and productive. There’s a long tradition, in fact, of “potager” gardens, vegies planted with an eye to beauty as well as usefulness, spirals set in stone or pebbles, circles like small vegie fountains […]

Fences keep out next door’s dog and give us privacy, but they can be beautiful too. Gardening expert Jackie French tells you how to make your fence a feature of your backyard. The flower-covered fence: My dream fence is covered in mandevilla, with is shiny green leaves and white flowers with what is possibly the […]

Flowerbeds generally fall into two categories: weed-filled or wonderful. Weeds are always waiting to pounce on flowerbeds. They grow faster than flowers and cope with heat, cold and drought better. So how do you keep your flowerbeds stunning but weed-free? Follow these steps and you’ll have a spectacular garden in no time. 1. Don’t be […]

In summer, red-hot pokers are, well, just too red, and sometimes yellow too — great lumbering things with blooms often more than a metre high, that look gaudy in all the summer glare. Yes, they’re hardy — so indestructible they really need a semi-trailer to back over them to daunt them. But despite their magnificence, […]

Autumn’s leaves have fallen, the garden is looking bare, and those pots of bright blooms in the supermarket look terribly tempting. Should you … or shouldn’t you? The case for buying potted bloomers Potted flowers will usually stay bright and blooming for longer than a bunch of flowers. With luck your potted bloomers will give […]

For years I thought poppies were one of the glories of spring and summer — stunning sprawls of California poppies in vivid orange, yellows, reds and even cream and white, flagrantly elegant oriental poppies. They’re the sort of flower you stop and stare at because you can’t believe that one thin-stemmed bloom could look quite […]

March is the perfect time to get trim and terrific – not you (though gardening is a great tummy trimmer and stress buster), but your trees and shrubs.

Kale chips anyone? What veggies to eat boiled, raw or roasted.

This is the season for jam makers. Even better, it’s the season when gardeners with laden trees give baskets full of fruit to jam enthusiasts — and the jam makers say “thank you” by giving the gardeners a jar or two of their best conserves. Homemade jam is rich in fruit and fragrant because it’s […]

Pears are possibly the easiest fruit tree to grow (although, arguably, plums could compete for that spot!). It’s hard to kill a pear tree. As long as your climate gets some frosts each winter — in other words, as far north as Brisbane — you can grow a pear tree. In subtropics and tropics, though, […]

If chillies weren’t so delicious (in small amounts, unless you love dragon’s breath) we’d grow them for their beauty. A chilli bush in full fruit is a stunning plant: bright green leaves and even brighter red fruit that hangs there for months. As I write this I’m looking out at our beds of perennial chillies […]

Spending a half an hour working in the garden can be magic. It will relax you, tone your muscles, help make you happy, provide vitamin D from the sunlight — and you may even create something wonderful, just in half an hour. (This doesn’t count the time spent in the garden centre. Garden centres can […]

In spring salvias bloom red, blue, purple and yellow. They have enormous bushes, taller than I am, with spires of flowers and dozens of eastern spinebills and other birds sipping at the nectar. By midsummer there are great banks of rich purple flowers that keep giving a stunning show all summer long. At Christmas the […]

You have just mortgaged your life and bought a house — with garden. Or you are paying rent on a house, and a garden comes with it … Or you have had a garden for years but “garden” is a bit of an exaggeration, as it’s mostly weeds, lawn that has to be mowed and […]

Midwinter is the time for feasts — not just around the table, with friends on long cold winter nights, but in the garden, too.. Summer’s harvests often have to be picked fast, before the fruit fly get into the apricots or the lettuces go to seed. Winter harvests are more gentle, and more generous too. […]

Lemon is one of the most magic scents in the garden. Much as I love roses — especially a cloud of rose perfume on a hot day — lemon scents are often stronger, as they come from the leaves, not the flowers. There are more leaves than blooms, so much more scent. This doesn’t mean […]

The first grapes I fell in love with grew next to a tiny cafe on the shore of Crete: a concrete floor, a goat standing on a chair on a table to reach the grapes over the fence, a small cup of too-sweet coffee and above us the glory of grapes, green leaves and bees […]

Once upon a time lavender was supposed to be the sexiest of scents. Sheets and underclothes were stored with lavender to keep the moths away, and we all know what happens among the sheets. And then Queen Victoria fell in love with lavender oil. She ordered that every room be polished with lavender and beeswax, […]

1. The world is happier with trees: Seriously, areas with trees have a lower crime rate and illness rates. This isn’t just because wealthy areas have brighter gardens and street trees: when trees and greenery are planted in disaffected areas the graffiti and other more serious crimes decrease as the trees grow bigger. It seems […]

Pineapple’s background: Prickly on the outside but sweet and juicy on the inside, the pineapple is a member of the Bromeliaceae family and is known as the “king of fruit” — no doubt a name inspired by the pineapple’s crown shaped top. The pineapple is native to South America but most of the pineapple we […]

One of the worst benevolences ever perpetrated on a generation of children was free milk at school — especially in Queensland where I grew up. Every child had to drink their small bottle of milk every morning. All morning we looked out of our classroom and watched the milk getting hotter and hotter under what […]

It’s berry time — time to eat mulberries or strawberries or loganberries or blueberries on sponge cakes for a Christmas treat. A strawberry-rich sponge cake is much lighter than a hunk of Christmas cake (though a rich fruitcake can’t be beaten in winter). Soon it will be planting time — and now is the best […]

“Grow herbs,” said the girl at the nursery helpfully to the customer standing next to me. “Herbs don’t need watering. They just look after themselves.” Like heck, they do! Okay, most of the herbs we use in cooking survive nicely on Mediterranean hillsides with no water other than what falls from the sky. But they […]

**”Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do. I’m half-crazy, all for the love of you” — ‘Daisy Bell’ by Harry Dacre.** If I were to choose one bush that would give flowers for most of the year, or even all year round in frost-free climates, tolerate drought and grow from a cutting stuck into the […]

For many years, the first thing I did when I came home was eat a passionfruit. When I was small, a passionfruit vine grew over our outdoor toilet, in the days before the last of the Brisbane suburbs were connected to the sewerage system. By the time I was in high school, our passionfruit vine […]

By the time your children reach Year 12, they will have spent nearly 14,500 hours at school (12 years of 40 weeks a year, five days a week, six hours a day), so it’s best to make sure their schoolyard is a stimulating environment, with flowers, grass, leaves and trees. Not only is gardening fun […]

Once upon a time gardeners believed that flowers and herbs had more power if gathered by moonlight – especially if you planted them for spells and potions. Maybe this was because some plants are more fragrant at night, as they try to attract night flying moths and other insects. Cool moist air also seems to […]

Sometimes you come across a plant that you’ve ignored for years, and realise it’s so absolutely perfect that you don’t know why you haven’t planted hundreds of them years ago. I had one of those moments two years ago, when I looked at a friend’s nerines. I’d never even thought of growing any before – […]

You see them in every gardening magazine – page after page of autumn glories, trees in every shade of red, orange, purple, gold and yellow. But sadly in Australia you need ‘two jumpers and a pair of long Johns’ winters to really get great autumn foliage – and even then, the chances are that your […]

I hated cabbage till the day I discovered they didn’t have to be boiled. Boiled cabbage looks like wet washing — and smells a lot worse. But stir—fried cabbage, with garlic and olive oil and a touch of soya sauce, is wonderful or, better still, broccoli or brocollini with olive oil and lemon juice, steamed […]

What do you get the person who has everything? A gift from the garden of course! Jackie French shares her favourite homemade Christmas presents. Christmas used to be a midwinter feast – a time to brighten up the darkest winter with all the good things from the harvest. And somehow – among all the other […]

When your life is hectic it’s time to just sit and enjoy your garden — a place of serenity where the bustle of the outside world is stilled. Or at least that’s what a garden can be like. Too often, though, the thought of ‘time in the garden’ means weeding, watering, mowing — the very […]

In old gardens- ones planted at least thirty years ago- you’ll often find a strange tall tree, with big leathery leaves and clumps of round orange fruit each spring, much loved by birds and flying foxes. Often new owners will cut the tree down and plant a nice gaudy azalea in its place, or at […]

Ever looked up at a block of flats, all bare and boring…and seen one that looked like a small piece of paradise among the concrete? Anyone can have a glorious balcony or patio. It just needs a bit of planning- and five minutes work a week. Choose the right plants. Balconies get hotter, colder, and […]

One dreary winter’s day… One dreary office desk… Add one pot of bright pink cyclamen… Okay, you won’t get a miracle, but I bet you’ll get at least a smile every time you look at those ridiculously pink pink PINK blooms peering up over the leaves. Winter flowering cyclamens brighten up any office desk, kitchen […]

Camellias are perhaps our best loved winter bloomer, cheering up many a grey winter day. But often gardeners wonder why next door’s camellia is covered with blooms, while their’s rarely has a flower, or looks brown leafed and dingy. The answer? Many gardeners don’t know what sort of camellia they’re growing. But a camellia is […]

A gorgeous garden costs money – or does it? All our garden plants once grew wild – and managed to create new plants all by themselves. Some of today’s plants are hybrids – if you collect their seed they won’t grow like their parents. But a surprising number of common garden plants are veryeasy to […]

Want a gorgeous big flower that blooms in sun or light shade, doesn’t need watering, pruning, weeding or feeding, and will refuse to die even if a semi-trailer backs over it? Then you need some agapanthus. Agapanthus are among the most generous bloomers about but… (there are always ‘buts’ in the gardening world!): ‘But’ number […]

Palms are tough. I once saw a photo of part of Hawaii after a tsunami had passed over it. Only the palms were still standing! Most palms grow fast, too. Some accept any amount of tropical heat; others adore the cold. Some need water, and some accept years of drought. In other words, there’s a […]

Shade Roses won’t bloom in dense shade. Check they haven’t been overgrown by a tree or shrub. Roses grown against the house wall may be shaded by the eaves as they grow taller. Prune them lower or cut away vegetation around them. Starvation If the flowers are small or lose their petals after a day […]

When to plant your roses Now — spring to early summer. Because most roses bloom most magnificently in spring, so you can see them in bloom to choose which one you want to buy. Winter is the time to buy bare root roses, ones that have been dug out of the ground when they are […]

Frost-free climates Plants for beauty: Seeds or seedlings of ageratum, alyssum, amaranthus, carnations, celosia, coleus, cosmos, dichondra, echinops, erigeron, gaillardia, gazania, gloxinia, gourds, hymenosporum, impatiens, nasturtiums, phlox, salvia. Very hot and dry gardens: move a shade cloth to cover veggie and flower gardens now to shelter them from the worst of the heat, pull out […]

Chokoes are a no-fail veg. Starve them, forget them, and they’ll still give you an autumn filled with so much fruit you’ll be pestering the neighbors to take some and looking up recipes for choko chutney, choko pie, choko and ginger jam (which isn’t bad, actually). My favourite way of eating chokoes depends on growing […]

Hanging baskets are a cheat’s way to get early flowers. Baskets heat up faster than soil in the ground and you can hang them over nice hot paving, beside brick walls or on warm patios too. In fact you can REALLY cheat and buy your flowers already blooming – just bung them in the basket […]

Which variety? Grow at least two varieties, or three, for better pollination, and choose Hass as one of those, as it ripens much later than the others so you’ll get fruit for longer. Avocadoes are VERY easy to grow from seed – but you MAY need two varieties to cross-pollinate each other or you won’t […]

Frost-free climates Plants for beauty: any ornamental shrub in the nursery; seeds or seedlings of alyssum, Californian poppy, calendula, cleome, coleus, gerbera, helichrysum, honesty, impatiens, kangaroo paw, marigold, pansy, petunias, phlox, salvia, sunflower, Swan River daisy, torenia, zinnia. Temperate Plants for beauty: Bare-rooted or potted roses and other deciduous shrubs; seeds of alyssum, calendula, heartsease, […]

Mooch around your garden before breakfast and see where it’s coldest, where frost has gathered, or where there seems to be a sunny, sheltered patch. Most gardens have these “microclimates” – cold spots where bulbs may thrive, warm spots where heat-lovers will thrive. Warm yourself up with some heavy work in the garden – dig […]

Frost-free climates Plants for beauty: alyssum, Californian poppy, calendula, cleome, coleus, gerbera, helichrysum, honesty, marigold, pansy, petunias, phlox, salvia, sunflower, sweet peas, torenia, zinnia. Temperate Plants for beauty: seeds of alyssum, calendula, English daisy (pictured), heartsease, lunaria; seedlings of evening primrose, gazanias, Iceland poppy, love-lies-bleeding, pansies, polyanthus, primulas, sweet peas, viola. Cold Plants for beauty: […]

Turn those horrible stretches of concrete out the back or front of the house into flowers and greenery with these six tricks to make your balcony flourish.