Recently I visited the Gladstone Park Hotel because there was a plant there that I really liked and I wanted to take a photo of it. While I was there, I found another couple of plants that I liked and then another couple more plants that I like.

It suddenly became clear to me that this was one of the best kind of commercial gardens that I’d come across for a while. So I thought this would make a great theme for an article – what makes a great commercial garden and how to make them work.

Now even though you probably may not own a hotel or a restaurant or office complex or anything that requires a commercial garden, some of the concepts and ideas and the way they’ve used plants in this garden could be really good to have in your own garden.

By their nature, commercial gardens are generally designed to be low maintenance. But they also want their building to look smart and inviting. So basically, what I saw at the Gladstone Park Hotel is the classic combination of a low maintenance garden that is very, very smart and very inviting. When you take a close look at the different plants that make up this garden, I think the person who designed it really knew their plants and chose them really well. They really made some very good choices.

Plants for a Commercial and Home Garden:

Miss Muffet

Now the first plant I want to talk about is what we call Miss Muffet. (Just like the nursery rhyme – Little Miss Muffet sat on her tuffet, eating her curds and whey!) The proper name is Japanese Pittosporum. It’s a lovely looking compact, low spreading kind of shrub that in springtime has beautiful fragrant flowers.

They have it near the drive-in bottle shop in a narrow little garden bed that’s a bit shady and it’s the perfect spot for it. It grows lovely and lush and won’t get too big, only needs a little bit of trim now and then.

Loropetalum

Moving along the same garden bed and right next to it and contrasting with it, is a plum coloured, gorgeous Loropetalum. It has beautiful dark purple foliage, 365 days a year. And that lovely purple foliage is adorned with delightful pink flowers in springtime. It makes such a contrast with the green of the Miss Muffet.

The bright pink flowers of the Loropetalum plant


The Loropetalum plant in blossom


All year round purple leaves of the Loropetalum plant

Obviously along this particular part of the garden bed which is outside windows, they wanted something low growing that wouldn’t block the view and they got that with both these plants that can be kept nice and low.

View more Loropetalum plants

Japanese Maple

But then they added another beautiful contrast in amongst the Loropetalum with a Japanese Maple. Not a fancy, expensive grafted Japanese Maple mind you, just your plain, basic Japanese Maple.

It’s beautiful, it’s green and lush, it’s very happy in its little shady corner but again it contrasts beautifully with all the plum coloured Loropetalum growing beneath it. It’s just gorgeous.

Speaking of shade, it’s interesting how some plants don’t like shade and with some plants their colours actually fade in the shade. But the plum colour of the Loropetalum seems to even intensify in the shade, taking on a really rich, dark purple. So if want something that really keeps the colour of its foliage in the shade, this is it.

View more of our Japanese Maples

Tractor Seat

Now just across from the Japanese Maple is a very unusual plant that’s quite a bit of a hot seller at the moment. They can be hard to get but we try to keep a good stock of them so always check with us or check our website. It’s called the Tractor Seat Plant and the reason for that name is obvious when you look at the big leaves on the plant.

They look like the old-style metal tractor seats from say the 1940s and 50s. The ones that were set on a big steel spring. Now these plants love a shady spot too. They get this beautiful, big lush foliage on them all year round and then in late spring you get this lovely, yellow, daisy-like flower that blooms with a sort of spidery like nature.

Silver Dichondra

Underneath this particular Tractor Seat Plant, they’ve used a little Silver Dichondra to set it off, but it’s an interesting and exciting entry plant the Tractor Seat, makes a big impression with those big leaves. Now they do need a bit of a drink. You don’t want them to be in the hot afternoon sun. They can take morning sun, with afternoon shade, because they love a bit of relief from the hot afternoon sun. Tractor Seat Plants make a big textural statement which they’ve used right at entrance to the hotel.

Liriope

Right near the entrance, along the path, they have put in some Liriope.

It’s an evergreen and it really thrives in a bit of a shady spot. It’s really lush and bright green and makes a beautiful tough border. Being near the entrance people will tend to walk through it and kick it a bit and it’ll fold over and bounce back, because it’s a good hard-wearing plant for a spot like this. So they’ve made another really good choice for this plant in this location with lots of foot traffic.

View more Liliope plants

Ficus Flash

Now on the other side of the path, to create some privacy for the people inside from those people walking up the path, they’ve put in some long narrow planters and used Ficus Flash to create a hedge. It’s been trimmed quite tight so it’s only about 50 cm thick, but it makes a beautiful thick privacy screen. You can tell it’s a Ficus Flash because it has these slightly curly leaves.

Now in these planter boxes they will have to keep it well watered, which they clearly do. So if you’ve got a little patio or a balcony or somewhere you want to create some privacy then using long narrow planter boxes just like they have here, with Ficus Flash in them, can create a narrow but thick privacy hedge or screen.

It’s quite a hard-wearing plant, so if you forget to water it occasionally or trim it too hard or forget to fertilise it, you’ll find that your Ficus Flash will still survive, even if it’s in a windy or sunny spot. Now here at this hotel they’ve put in a drip irrigation system and that’s keeping their Ficus Flash nice and lush and green.

Lilly Pilly

Now I want to talk about the first thing I actually came to photograph at this hotel. It’s a miniature Lily Pilly hedge. Now all around Melbourne you find a lot of Lily Pilly hedges without leaves on them because we’ve had this beetle move down from Queensland and it’s eating the leaves off many of the hedges around Melbourne and making them look quite bare.

But the Lily Pilly hedge at this hotel is the Acmena Smithii variety and that’s one that the beetle doesn’t like to eat. There’s a half a dozen other varieties of Lily Pilly that the beetle doesn’t eat but this one is called Ruby Tips. It has a beautiful fine leaf and you won’t find any beetles or psyllids attacking this variety of Lily Pilly. So these stay healthy and lovely without any sprays.

Again this shows whoever designed this garden for the Gladstone Park Hotel made some good choices. This one has been trimmed recently so in another couple of weeks you’ll see these bright red tips come in which is where it gets its name Ruby Tips. And the whole thing will just have this lovely bright red colour all over it.

Moon Bay Nandina

Another excellent plant they have chosen in this commercial garden is something I love. It’s called a Moon Bay Nandina. Fully grown as they are in this garden, they are about 50 cm tall and 50-60 cm wide. They are lovely and lush and hard wearing. Being in a pub near where patrons walk you could have someone who’s drunk, fall over them and they would just stand back up again. The plant that is, not necessarily the person!

Moon Bay Nandina are a really good hardy plant. They don’t need much water and don’t need really much of anything. They are really low maintenance, a bit of weeding sometimes. They are really lush, beautiful, hardy plants. What I love is that when they are mass planted like they are at this hotel you could just walk through them and they’re lovely and soft. I think they’re fabulous. All year round they’re bright green with red tips on them, but in winter they turn an absolutely brilliant red.

Golf Ball plants

Right next to them, again to make a wonderful natural contrast is a group of Golf Ball plants, so-called because they

just naturally grow into this ball shape. Plants with ball shapes are very much in fashion at the moment with things like English Box balls, but with them, you have to actually shape them with your shears and know what you are doing.

But the great thing about the Golf Balls I see here are that they would have been planted several years ago and they’ve all grown into these lovely ball shapes without any help at all. Really interesting to look at and easy to grow.

Crepe Myrtles

Now in between all these Golf Balls and the Moon Bay Nandina, they’ve planted some Crepe Myrtle trees. And towards mid-summer they’ll be covered in blossoms, probably white ones. But it’s not just the flowers on the Crepe Myrtles, they also have the most beautiful bark which looks fantastic against the green below it. So you get the blossoms, then beautiful autumn colours but always the lovely bark. Crepe Myrtles also fork well naturally, and will make a beautiful shape without anyone doing much to them.

View more Crepe Myrtle trees

Indian Hawthorn ‘Oriental Pearl’

Next to the Crepe Myrtle they’ve got a nice low rounded hedge, that’s really super-duper low maintenance. It’s called an Indian Hawthorn ‘Oriental Pearl’ and it’s probably never even been trimmed. In early spring it would have been covered in beautiful white blossoms all over it.

It’s self-shaping and just makes a lovely round, sort of mounded shape like this. Again, another plant where they have made a really, really good choice.

Lomandra Tanika

Now right next to the lovely rounded shape of the Oriental Pearl they’ve planted some Lomandra Tanika which is all soft and feathery. It’s an Australian native grass.

White Correa

Next to that you’ve got some lovely White Correa which they cut into balls. They provide a nice silver contrast. It would have required a bit of trimming and some encouragement to make the Correa into a ball shape but mixed in amongst all these balls of the Moon Bay, the Golf Balls and even the rounded Oriental Pearl, you have the soft spiky contrast of the Lomandra Tanika.

In Closing

So there you have it. The Gladstone Hotel has got a really great commercial garden. Just a good selection of well-chosen plants, well-spaced too, so you get a really good landscape in the garden.

Now, whether you’ve got a commercial garden you need help with or a garden for your home, then please take advantage of our Free Garden Design service and let us use our decades of experience to help you create something you’ll love or your customers and staff will love. Book your Free Garden Design here or below.

Feeling inspired to create your own garden, but want some expert advice? Try our one-on-one garden design service with Chris. Together you’ll come up with a selection of plants along with a layout plan that gives you the look you want, as well as being suitable for your local soil and conditions.

get your own tailored modern garden design:

FIND OUT HOW

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Welcome to Melbourne (& Victoria’s) largest plant nursery – Hello Hello Plants!

We have over 250,000 plants on our 1.5 acre site, covering over 3,000 different varieties. These range from the tiniest ground covers to giant fruit trees and more.

Let us take you on a step-by-step “tour” of our nursery. We hope you can visit us in person soon.

The different zones of our nursery:

Front Display

Our frontal display outside the nursery features some of our very best bargains and some of the most exciting things we have on offer. Here you’ll find our ‘Gardens for Everyone’ promotion. This runs all year round with offers like small cottage plants, border plants or ground covers that other nurseries might sell for $10 -12, even up to $14-15, but we sell for around $7. That includes lots of things like Salvias and Carnations, etc.

You’ll also find Succulents here and Jade plants. Lots of things that we grow ourselves or that we got in cheap on special deals. There’s a lot out front and it’s pretty big. So big, people think it’s the whole nursery, but there’s so much more to see once you step inside.

Box Section

Our box section contains some of the most popular varieties, including English Box, Japanese Box, Korean Box, Privet Box and “Tom Thumb” (a kind of fake box). They are available in sizes ranging from 3-inch pots from $1.99 right up to 16-inch pots from $149.99.

English Box


Box Leaf Privet


Box Leaf Privet


Japanese Box Hedge


Korean Box Hedge


Tom Thumb Box

You can choose something small and cheap to get your started or if you need something already big and well-established, we can supply that too.

Once you choose your preferred Box, if you want 20, 30 or even 50 of them don’t worry, we stock hundreds if not thousands of them to make sure we always have what our customers want!

View more Box Hedge plants

Edibles

In the Edibles section of our nursery you will find an enormous variety of edible plants including herbs and plants that produce fruits. From Olives Trees to Tomato Plants and Fig Trees to a whole range of Citrus Trees including Oranges, Lemons, & Limes, as well as Stone Fruit Trees such as Peaches, Plums & Cherries and of course Apple & Pear Trees too. 

Many of our fruit trees are available in both full size for your garden and dwarf varieties if you need to grow them in pots.

Here you will also find a wide variety of berries and almost every imaginable herb. 

View more Edible plants

Cool Climate Tropical Zone

In this zone you will find Birds of Paradise as well as different palms like Date Palms and Cocos Palms, and African Milk Cactus. A lot of these could be used indoor or outdoor, it’s your choice.

Cottage Garden

Our Cottage Garden section features a wide variety of annuals and perennials that will flower profusely and give you that delightful, colourful cottage garden you seek.

Here you will find colourful favourites like Daisies, Foxgloves, Pansies, Petunias, Verbenas, Impatiens, etc. You’ll see lots of little 4-inch pots, all from around $7.

If you want colour all year round, not just flowers that bloom only for a short-time each year, then choose from our range of plants with coloured foliage, like Chalk Sticks for example which have a lovely silver blue foliage or Cordylines which look like small colourful palm trees or Flaxes that come in various shades.

View more Cottage Garden plants

Ground Covers

Ground covers are growing in popularity as an alternative to lawns as people are seeking to avoid having to mow. We propagate a lot of the ground covers ourselves. They are low maintenance, look great and work well to fill in between pavers or pathways as a “no-mowing” alternative to grass.

Here you will find varieties like Asiatic Jasmine, White Creeping Thyme, Silverlawn, Mint ‘Corsican’, Dichondra repens, Juniperus ‘Blue Rug’ and Casuarina – the “Cousin It” plant.

Asiatic Jasmine ground cover


Silverlawn ground cover


White Creeping Thyme ground cover


Corsican Mint ground cover


Casuarina ground cover, the ‘Cousin It’ plant


Casuarina ground cover


Dichondra repens ground cover


Dichondra repens ground cover


Juniperus ‘Blue Rug’ ground cover


View more ground cover plants

Grasslands

In our grasslands section you will find a wide variety of both native and exotic grasses in small, medium, tall and even flowering varieties.

Look for Pet Grass, Mondo Grass, Liriope, Lomandra, Zebra Grass and Anigozanthos and much, much more. 

Overflow Area

Don’t miss our Overflow Area. This is where we display some of the best bargains we have. Sometimes we find a great deal on plants and we might buy 500 or 1000 of them. Or if we think the industry is going to run short on something for an upcoming season we buy up big to make sure our customers don’t miss out. 

When we don’t have room for all these extra special bargains, this is where we put them.

Australian Natives

In this section you will find a vast number of uniquely Australian plants including the most well-known favourites like Eucalypts, Banksias, Acacias, Grevilleas, Westringias and Callistemons in both large and small varieties as well as Kangaroo Paws.

But here you will also find plants that are not strictly Australian Natives, like Leucadendron which is actually from South Africa, a land with a similar climate to ours. So it’s very popular in Australian Native gardens because its colour works well with our local plants.

Asian

If you want a ‘Touch of Asia’ in your garden, take a look at our Oriental Pearls and ‘Snow Maiden’ Indian Hawthorn, or our Bamboo section which features about 10-15 types of bamboo. You’ll also discover around 40-50 different sorts of Japanese Maples here.

Conifers

If you pine for conifers you will love this section. We have Hedging Conifers and Avenue Conifers and Specimen or Individual Conifers. If you want conifers, we’ve got conifers!

Deciduous Trees

Our collection of deciduous trees is extensive. We have Maples galore – from Norwegian Maples to Field Maples to Japanese Maples and Snake Bark Maples.

Many of these are great for an entrance area because they grow into a lovely ball on a stick with beautiful Maple leaves. Here you’ll also find the very popular Crepe Myrtles.

View more Deciduous Trees

Bare Rooted Section

Our famous “bare-rooted” area is where we sell plants out of their pots with their roots exposed and free of soil. We can only do this with plants during their dormant stage so it only happens for a limited time each year.

Plants we sell bare-rooted include fruit trees such as citrus, apple and pear, a variety of roses, English Box and many ornamental trees such as Weeping Cherries and Japanese Maples. 

With no soil or pot needed for bare-rooted plants they are cheap to transport and store so you can enjoy them for up to 75% off potted prices.

Indoor Plants

Our indoor plants section is packed with interesting and popular indoor plants. Whether you want just one to put in a little pot in the corner or to fill your whole house with them, here you will find all the popular favourites.

Look for “Mother-in-Law’s Tongue”, Devils Ivy, Aloe Vera, Spider Grass, Maidenhair Fern, Fruit Salad Plant, Peace Lily, Cyclamen, Orchids and of course, Succulents.

View more Indoor Plants

Pick Up & Despatch Area

With 5 delivery vans working all day, every day to fulfill our customer’s online orders there are always plants leaving to be delivered all over Melbourne and Victoria.

Many customers choose to come collect their online orders themselves so this is where you can go to pick up your order. If you don’t know how, just ask one of our friendly, helpful staff.

Free Garden Design Area

Just to the left of the front desk is our FREE Garden Design area. This is where we do Free Garden Designs for our customers. We get very busy on weekends so best to book in advance. We are always happy to help you design your garden for free and help you to pick the best plants and the right plants to make it look wonderful.

Feeling inspired to create your own garden, but want some expert advice? Try our one-on-one garden design service with Chris. Together you’ll come up with a selection of plants along with a layout plan that gives you the look you want, as well as being suitable for your local soil and conditions.

get your own tailored modern garden design:

FIND OUT HOW

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“I want to take a p*ss in my yard and have no one be able to see me.”

These are the words my friend told the real estate agent, a real estate agent that I knew personally and had contacted on my friend’s behalf, mind you. I was mortified. But you know what, he had a point. Everyone wants the freedom to walk around their garden in pj’s or underwear or whatever takes their fancy. 

That’s why I’ve created a list of MY Top 10 Hedges & Screens for fast reliable privacy. Now this is not a countdown of the top ten most popular hedges, because frankly, those lists just aren’t correct. This is the list I have created, using years of practical hands-on experience and decades of horticulture knowledge.

First, we need to chat about the fact that these aren’t even the hedges I was recommending ten years ago. Things have changed since then. A lot. There are more two storey houses around which means you’re going to need taller hedges that can also handle the shade. Oh, and that really popular Lily Pilly people love so much? Yeah, there’s a beetle that loves Lilly Pillys so much it moved from Queensland to also live in Victoria. Many species of Lilly Pillys are now being decimated by these beetles. Not to mention blocks are getting smaller, which means that you’re likely to have confined root spaces. Now, more than ever, people are needing privacy.

This is how you’re going to get it.

Top 10 Hedges and Screens for Privacy

Weeping Lilly Pilly

Starting off with the first pick is the Weeping Lilly Pilly. Yes, you heard that right. No, I’m not talking about the Lilly Pilly that is being chowed down by that beetle, but rather a type of Lilly Pilly that the beetles don’t touch. The Weeping Lilly Pilly grows very, very fast – we’re talking a metre and half per year. So, in two years you could have a hedge that is four or five metres tall. Bye bye neighbours. The Weeping Lilly Pilly also does great in the shade so it’s not a problem if you’re planting them next to tall buildings. Another point in favour of the Weeping Lilly Pilly is that they very seldom produce a berry, which means you don’t have to worry about berries staining your pavement. This is just a really hardy hedge that is low maintenance and reliable with very few problems.

View our Weeping Lilly Pilly hedge plants

Smithii Acmena

My next favourite is the Smithii Acmena which is another type of Lilly Pilly that has also avoided the advances of those pesky beetles. Who knows what is going on in the minds of those beetles, but they just hate the Smithii Acmena. Now, these are a good option if you’re living by the sea as they can take a bit of salt. They’re fast growing and range between heights of 1.5 meters up to about 4 metres, sometimes even 5 of 6 metres. There is also a tonne of different varieties. You got types such as Fire Screen, Forest Flame, even a Cherry Surprise which gives a sort of red toning on the new growth. Overall, the Smithii Acmena gives you fairly fine dense foliage but without the weeping finish you get from Weeping Lilly Pillys. 

View our Smithii Acumen Lilly Pilly hedge plants

Ficus Flash

An established Ficus Flash hedge screening.


Sizes available at Hello Hello Plants


Leaves of the Ficus Flash

My next pick is the Ficus Flash – they’re just absolutely fabulous! You’ll understand the name when you see how quickly these grow, one guy had a Ficus Flash hedge that was two metres high within 18 months. Now the bad side of Ficus Flash is that it has a very aggressive root system and if you allow them to grow to full size, their roots can be quite destructive. Definitely don’t go planting this next to someone’s pool or you might have some angry neighbours, and well the whole point of this is so they DON’T bother you. But all of this is very easily managed by just trimming them on a regular basis and being smart with where you plant it. 

Chris in front of Ficus Flash hedging


Established Ficus Flash hedge


2 years of growth, before and after

The beautiful evergreen wall of luscious thick leaves you get in no time makes it well worth it. Only thing to note here is that they don’t do great in frost prone areas. Don’t get disheartened too quickly though if you are in a frosty area, as we do have a Ficus Hillii which is a great alternative.

View our Ficus Flash hedge plants

Sweet Viburnum

The Sweet Viburnum is one of my favourites these days, I use it all the time because its so versatile.  I visited a customer recently and they planted it when it was about 20 cm and now have a bushy hedge over 1 metre high in just 12 months. It looked absolutely fabulous; all green and lush and beautiful. What’s great about the Sweet Viburnum is that it’ll thrive even in terrible shade or hot sun. You can stick them under trees and rest assured knowing they won’t wilt from the lack of sun exposure. Sweet Viburnum will grow up to four metres in height and has a slightly tropical look with big green flowers and nice white flowers in spring. 

View our Sweet Viburnum hedge plants

Glauca Pencil Pine

The next on is the Glauca Pencil Pine – the hedge you get when you want it tall without the effort of needing to trim it constantly. This is a practical hedge that grows quickly, around a metre and a half a year and can get up to about nine metres tall. Its best to plant them around a metre apart to end up with a lovely green wall that doesn’t ever really need trimming. For a tall screen that’s very sensible, very economical, and very, very fast and reliable you can’t beat a Glauca Pencil Pine.

View our Glauca Pencil Pine hedge plants

Box Leaf Privet

Another one of my favourites is your Box Leaf Privet. From a distance it actually looks a bit like an English Box, but you don’t have to wait years and years for it to grow. A Box Leaf Privet can start out as 20cm tall and be over a metre high in 12 months. It has a nice formal look to it and Box Leaf Privet will grow in almost any soil or conditions. They’re also quite soft and easy to trim – basically it’s just a good reliable hedge that isn’t going to cost you a lot. 

View our Box Leaf Privet hedge plants

Portuguese Laurel

Another great option is the Portuguese Laurel which does fantastically in both deep shade and hot sun. Now this one isn’t as fast growing as the others but it’s a great solution for when you’re planting a hedge in an area that is going to deal with both a lot of shade and a lot of sun. It’s nice and easy to trim and train and has this really classy formal look to it. In springtime they have this beautiful white flower that’s like a cat’s tail that comes down and curves and looks a little fluffy. Really just a beautiful look with the dark green foliage.

View our Portuguese Laurel hedge plants

Cherry Laurel

The next one is your Cherry Laurel, which is perfect for somebody who wants a really grand hedge that is going to grow quickly. It has great big, luscious foliage on it and its one of the best options for doing a tall hedge fast. It’s a great thing for people in frosty areas, like Mount Macedon where basically every third hedge is a Cherry Laurel Hedge. 

View our Cherry Laurel hedge plants

Silver Sheen

Next is the Silver Sheen, a hedge that used to be the most popular hedge in Melbourne. This hedge is perfect for when you want something really narrow, as you can trim it quite a bit and it still maintains a nice thick bushiness. It grows very, very quickly but it’s important to have good soil so if you have terrible soil then you’re going to need to mix a bit of potting mix or good stuff in there to get it going. You can take a medium sized skinny little plant and turn it into a nice bushy two metre hedge in 12 months. Best to stick this one in a sunny spot but it can also grow in a shady spot. 

View our Silver Sheen hedge plants

Photinia Robusta

When Mr. Kill ‘em quick comes in, I’m running to recommend Photinia Robusta because this hedge is like a cockroach – it’s going to survive anything. Give it heat, drought, wind, poor soil, moderate wet feet, severe frost, and the thing just doesn’t die. It’s miraculous! It also has this brilliant red foliage that looks gorgeous in the garden. Now use plenty of water and fertilizer when its young and it grows like crazy, I’m talking up to one and half meters a year. Then once you’ve established it as the size you want, well, you can almost stop watering and fertilising it. Now I’m not saying you should purposefully treat it terribly, but you know, this is for the people out there that aren’t particularly green thumbs. 

View our Photinia Robusta hedge plants

In closing

If you’re still feeling lost, then it’s always a good idea to get in contact with someone who knows what they’re doing. Everyone deserves access to a beautiful garden, but not everyone has the knowledge or skill to make that happen. Which is why I started my free Garden Designs where you get one on one time with me, or one of our staff, to design your perfect dream garden, that will also realistically work in your space. Hedges can be a major investment both in terms of money and time and there’s no point planting something if in two years its dying because you didn’t have the right soil for it. I know the different types of hedges that are available, the types of problems, fashion, and landscape design aspect. Just jump onto our website and look for Free Garden Design button and you can be wondering around your backyard naked and carefree in no time. 

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Hello, Hello. Chris Lucas here,

Every week in our nursery I do a couple of dozen Free Garden Designs for our customers. I thought it was time to tell you why I’m qualified to do them.

In the early days

My history in gardening is that my mum was a fabulous gardener. And my mum and my dad over the years, built acres of gardens and us kids were basically the labourers. We helped do it all. We were instructed by them on what to do and how to mulch and how to do this and how to do that. My mum had beautiful garden design ideas. So I learned a lot from her.

Then when I was aged 7, I went door knocking for jobs I could do to earn some pocket money. I ended up several kilometres from home at the home of this retired female photographer. She took me on as a gardener. She was the first person who, after knocking on many doors and asking for gardening work, who didn’t tell me to go away! I worked for her every Saturday morning for 10 years till I was 17.

She was a cottage gardener – a style of garden many people know. This gave me a real passion for cottage gardens. Being retired she basically treated her cottage garden like a full-time job. Most days she’d be out there from 9 or 10 o’clock in the morning until 5 or 6 o’clock in the evening. She’d be planting new plants and weeding and doing things. I had to do a lot of the heavy work, lifting and dragging things, and some quite tedious jobs. She used to love English lawn daisies. I’d have to crawl across this giant expansive lawn planting English lawn daisies all through her lawn. But that gave me a very interesting garden. 

Now, the first time I ever tried to design a garden was I was going to St. Joseph’s Regional College in Ferntree Gully. I was about 12 years old and they were getting the boys to do the garden there. They had a very, very tight budget. People were bringing odd plants from their homes and just sticking them in the ground. I remember looking at the garden and thinking there was no cohesion in the design. 

So I went to the principal, Father O’Sullivan, and I offered to design the garden so that it would all kind of work together instead of just being bits and pieces here and there. I think he thought I didn’t know what I was doing or something like that, so he patted me on the back, thanked me and said he’d consider it. But it didn’t happen. So I never succeeded in my first attempt at doing a garden design. But I was still really quite keen to try and do something so that the school actually looked good to me. The gardens were really letting it down. 

Of course, since then, I’ve become a plant retailer for many, many years. In the course of doing that, lots of people have asked me how to plant something up or how to do something. I’ve done it so often now. But I started off just offering our customers a little bit of design advice or ideas for gardens when I was helping some of my customers. Gradually it evolved to where people would start following me and tracking me down to get a design from me. 

The difference between me and other garden designers

So then we started to formalise it all and I began to actually sit down with customers and start sketching out plans and designs for gardens.

Now I’ve been doing these garden designs for about 10 years now. So I’ve got lots and lots of customers who have now got very nice established gardens that I designed for them. 

How it works now is that it has evolved into something quite different to how normal garden designs work. When you work with a regular garden designer, like a landscape designer, they will charge you several thousand dollars.

Of course, since then, I’ve become a plant retailer for many, many years. In the course of doing that, lots of people have asked me how to plant something up or how to do something. I’ve done it so often now. But I started off just offering our customers a little bit of design advice or ideas for gardens when I was helping some of my customers. Gradually it evolved to where people would start following me and tracking me down to get a design from me. 

What happens is you employ them to come out to your house and look around the garden with you. They might sit down for a bit and discuss it with you, but in total they might spend maybe an hour or two there. They’ll measure it all up, and they might go away for 3, 4, 5, 6 weeks. When they come back, you might find you still have several thousand dollars to pay on top of what you have already paid in advance. Most of the design has been done by the designer on their own in an office somewhere. 

When they arrive to present their design, they unroll it and they might say, look, we’re going to put yellow daisies here. And you might say, but I don’t like yellow daisies. Now they have to sort of defends their position. Oh you don’t like yellow daisies, they say. But look, yellow daisies are all the go these days and they’re the best. You’ve got to have yellow daisies. So people often end up with those expensive designs, that are something they don’t like or have some aspect to them that they don’t like. 

My approach is very different. My philosophy is that the right garden for you is the garden that you love. So I design a lot of very different gardens. I do gardens that I might personally not like, but I do the garden for you, the customer. And it’s got the things in it, that you love. And anything you dislike well I won’t put it in there. Now the great thing that we have that is also different from other garden designers, is that I have access to an incredible 15,000 plants or so on our website. And I’ve got even more different things in the nursery.

The advantage of the range available at Hello Hello Plants

So I have an enormous range to choose from when designing for a customer. Therefore when I sit down with a customer I can do it all on the spot. You don’t have to wait weeks and weeks. With us it could take just 30 or 45 minutes or maybe a little bit longer. But it’s all very responsive. So if I say look, I think you should put yellow daisies all along here, and you say, but I hate yellow and I hate daisies, then I say, right, let’s scrap the yellow daisies!!

Then I talk to you about what you want. And you might say, look, I really love pink. And what I really love is those Japanese Anemones. And if I could have a big patch of those, I’d be really, really happy. So I work out how I might have to ship them around to get them in the shade or something like that. But I work out how to accommodate what people want and at the same time turn it into a really good design.

So what we do is to take your wishes and ideas and turn them into a garden design. But it’s all on the spot, it’s responsive. We look for you, the customer to say, I don’t like that, but gee I really like those plants over here. 

Or you might bring a page from a magazine with you and say, I just love the look of the way this is in this magazine. What I’m looking for is something like this. Then I say, well, look, I can blend that in for you. But sometimes there are some technical things I have to take into consideration. Because I’m a nurseryman, I think I have a bit of an edge over a lot of garden designers because I know about soil types. People might say, look, I want to fill that front garden there with gardenias. I might say, well, you can do that, but with that heavy clay there, I reckon we’re going to have to change that.

So you’re going to have to spend some money and we’re going to have to change that over to a gardenia mix or otherwise it’ll be a disaster. Or they’ll say, look, I really love Hydrangeas and I want Hydrangeas everywhere. And I say, well, how much water have you got? Because Hydrangeas love water and you’ve really got to be watering them. So we might temper your need for Hydrangeas or make sure that we place them in a spot where they can easily be kept well-watered. 

Giving the customer what they want

Basically my job is to find out what you the customer really wants and then deliver what you really want in a form that makes a cohesive kind of a landscape. At the same time, my main goal is I want people to come back into which they do all the time, come back to use in 2, 3, 4, 5 years’ time and say, that garden you did for me, the one with all the hedges and the magnolias, I love it. It’s fantastic. It’s really done well, and that’s the most important thing for me on the day. 

Because if you say to me let’s fill this garden with gardenias and the soil’s all wrong, then a couple of years from now, you’re not going to be happy. So I would rather upset you today and say, look, you’ve got to either change the soil or change the plant. We can’t put gardenias in that rubbish soil. I do confront and challenge my customers a little bit because my No. 1 goal is for you to have something that you love. But it must work and it must be something which achieves your goals and be something that’s successful down the track. 

Now for a lot of people, probably the most common thing they ask for is a low maintenance garden. Some people say, look, I want a really, low maintenance garden but then they ask you for things that really aren’t low maintenance. So I might have to say, well, look, you’re going to have to make a sacrifice here because these aren’t really a low maintenance plant. So if you really love them, then let’s put them in, but let’s do the rest of the garden low maintenance.

I always try to compromise and work with you to achieve your aims. My technical knowledge of plants and soils etc is very important because it allows me to make the right design exist. It makes it real, and it makes it workable.

Another I’ve discovered is that sometimes you have a customer who says they want natives and they want colour. But when I delve a little deeper, I might discover that they didn’t really want natives at all. What they wanted was something very tough and low maintenance. And their word for tough and low maintenance was native. So what they really wanted was a colourful mix of natives and other plants that were colourful and low maintenance. So there’s a lot of interpretation that I have to do because if I had of just gone with a design that was all natives, they wouldn’t have been entirely happy with it because it wouldn’t have really satisfied what they were actually after.

That’s one of the other advantages of doing our interactive garden designs. It means I can interpret what people are saying. Sometimes it can be difficult because they’ll say, everything’s got to be evergreen, but I want red maples. And you go, but they’re deciduous! So you have to sort through some of the contrary demands and work out what’s really important. So maybe you end up giving them a red tree that’s evergreen, or maybe you get them to accept that they’re going to have some red maples, but they’re going to be deciduous.

So if you want to come along for one of our Free Garden designs the best thing to do is to go online and book or you can ring up one of the staff and book. What we ask for is a deposit that gets credited against anything you might purchase on the day. So if you want your front garden done, you come in and whatever it costs for the plants for your front garden, then what you pay for the garden design comes off the cost of those plants. Say you pay $50 for the design, then when you buy some plants it comes off and that makes the garden design completely free. If you don’t buy anything then it’s going to cost you $50. 

Get the best out of your garden design with us

Now how do you get the best out of your Garden Design service with us? Well what we are most hungry for is information. If you can bring along a rough drawing of your current garden or area with measurements, that’s fantastic. I love it because often we waste the most time trying to work out the shape of your garden from a couple of photos and from guessing at the measurements, like how far apart the fence posts are and how many there are. You don’t need to measure things down to the millimetre. Just go out and pace it and do nice big paces. Then you can tell us – look, it’s six paces long and it’s three paces wide. 

The next thing I need to know is where does the sun rise and fall? Because to me it’s all about being technically correct. Then I like to see a soil sample. Take a photo of the soil, or dig up a bit of soil and bring it in. So I like to see a soil sample. And I like to see photographs of your garden, including your problem areas. So say, look, I’ve got this terrible big tap that’s there and I need to hide it. So you photograph that tap and I’ll look at the tap and I’ll figure out how you’re going to hide that tap.

So basically it’s a diagram, measurements, soil sample and photographs. But don’t overwhelm me with 64 photographs I won’t have time to study. A single photo won’t be enough. A nice number of photos is probably 10 or 12 photos of a good-sized garden.

Another thing you can do to get the best out of the design session is to go for a walk around your neighbourhood and pick out some garden design or something that you really like and photograph that. Or look at magazines or go online and bring in a page or a screenshot. That’s always a great help. I love it when people come in and say, look, Chris, what I really like is this sort of coastal look here. I like these plants with these fluffy tops on them. You don’t really have to know too much about them. If I look at a photo, I’ll probably know what type of plant it is.

It’s also important to have some idea of a budget for your garden. And make sure it’s a realistic budget for what you want to do. Also, please make sure if you are a couple that you both come along together, because if only one person comes along and they like yellow daisies but the other person doesn’t and I design a whole garden around them, when they get home, the design will just get thrown out. It’s best you both come along and whoever is the real decision maker needs to be there. This is also important when it comes to budget because often each person will have a completely different idea of budget than the other.

If you’re a young couple it can be helpful to bring in a parent, who might have a lot of gardening experience. So when I talk all the technical stuff, they can understand me and interpret it for you.

I’ve done every garden you can imagine, take advantage of it

When it comes to garden design, I have basically done everything. From people with a 20 acre property who wanted us to design the whole thing to someone who had just two or three little garden beds. I’ve designed a 400 metre driveway in a mix of casual and formal, a sort of fusion design. I’ve designed a children’s outdoor play area. I’ve had young couples come in who’ve bought established houses and wanted to rip the entire garden out and also young people who’ve bought new houses and want to start a garden from scratch.

We’ve had property developers come in with huge mansions who were very demanding in what they wanted and we’ve created fabulous front gardens for them. We’ve done courtyards and little balcony jobs where we’ve had to do it all with pot plants. They can be challenging and fun as you have to use mostly wind-hardy plants. One couple were in love with beautiful red and green Japanese Maples and that’s what they wanted but where they were it was a terrible wind tunnel and the Maples would have been smashed. So I used a different combination of plants and they loved it.

I’ve worked on gardens that were a bit empty and just needed a few new plants here and there to spruce it up a bit. I’ve done gardens on really tight budgets. One young couple had only $500 to spend on a native garden and it was surprising in the end what we could do for them. We also do gardens for “knockdown/rebuilds” where people might retain a couple of key plants from the original garden but then we build a whole new garden around them.

I’ve even done a garden for an old pensioner and all she had to spend was $20!! Yes, $20! I ended up getting some plants from my own garden to put in for her but I was really happy for the challenge and to do something nice for her. So don’t be scared if you have a really tight budget, Just be up front and tell us and we’ll make it work. We have some specials out the back that might just work for you.

I think the only time it really goes wrong is when somebody has a tight budget but they don’t tell me and then we go in too deep. Maybe they feel too embarrassed to say they can’t afford it or something like that. If I’m told upfront, I can work something out and really help people on a tight budget.

Getting your garden done

Now we don’t actually plant the garden. We can do the design and supply the plants, potting mixes, fertilisers, etc but we don’t do the actual planting of the plants. We can recommend people for you for this. 

Now also don’t be afraid if you have NO idea of what you want. Just come in with your little drawing of the garden space, some measurements, a soil sample and we will go from there. You might have no idea of your vision or your style but we’ll work it out. Usually I will talk about what is the outcome you want from your garden. Do you want to improve the street appeal? Do you want a super low maintenance garden? You don’t have to even tell me what sort of plants you like. Just say look I love colour and I need it to look really nice when my friends and my family come around. Or I want it to look fabulous when I come home and pull up in the drive. Or I need something super low maintenance. Just tell me the outcome and I’ll give you the garden.

As a final thing, if you’re not really experienced with gardens at all, then as well as the design itself I might give you a little action plan of all steps you need to do in sequence. This can be really, really important. I might say, look, the first thing you should do is mark out this new garden, and then the next thing will be to spray it with weedkiller. Then I’ll give you the various steps to do. It gives you confidence to take it on and do what you have to do. You might discover you need to hire somebody to do one of the action steps. That’s the other thing that we provide with the garden design is when required an action plan.

In closing

So what’s really important about our garden designs isn’t so much that they’re free. While being free is a great thing because right at the moment, the price of everything’s going up and people are having trouble affording things. So free is a great feature, but that’s not the most important reason to choose our garden designs. The most important reason is that our garden designs are unique because we do each one individually for you. I work with your needs. Every garden I do is completely different to the last one. And most important, it’s the interaction that we have designing it together that makes it work best. That way you get a garden that you will really love. 

We offer garden designs on weekends and most weekdays, except Wednesdays. Please book here or call the nursery on (03) 9359 3331.

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Weeping Cherries came about because for hundreds of years in China and Japan, people bred and collected different specimens of unusual cherry blossoms, particularly ones that cascaded or grew differently.

All weeping cherries share similar growing attributes because they are all created by grafting different tops onto the same type of root stock.

Weeping cherries are created by taking the tall stem of an upright cherry tree and grafting onto it different types of tops. Essentially weeping cherries either come in a cascading or “weeping” variety, where the branches all grow downwards or they grow out horizontally from the graft, but not tall like a regular cherry.

Different nurseries will graft heads of weeping cherries at varying heights so you can usually find the exact variety you want at the height you want, if you just look (or talk to your local nursery.)

Each weeping cherry will bloom at different times in spring, with the Falling Snow being the earliest.

You will not find big luscious juicy cherries unfortunately on a weeping cherry tree. They are not really suitable for eating and only grow tiny little pips with a small amount of skin over them. But what they lose in fruit, they make up for in spectacular blossoms that are just gorgeous.

They are wonderful as a feature tree as they can look stunning in the middle of a garden or even in a large pot in the right place.

Approximately 98% of all weeping cherries sold in Melbourne tend to fall into 5 basic varieties.

5 Best Weeping Cherry Trees

Falling Snow Weeping Cherry

The most popular weeping cherry is definitely the Falling Snow. It has a neat symmetrical shape that cascades almost straight down. Its head is not overly large and it has a beautiful dense white blossom that blooms quite early in spring for a spectacular display. It’s often the first of the weeping cherry varieties to blossom.

Falling Snow is a popular courtyard tree. Many people choose to grow them in pots with a shorter stem because if they are too tall then the blossoms are too high and you can’t enjoy them as much. Growing them so they bloom at eye level is more popular. Low grafted Falling Snow can look gorgeous in pots.

View our Falling Snow Weeping Cherries

Subhirtella alba Weeping Cherry

The next most popular Weeping Cherry is probably the Subhirtella alba, or as most nurserymen call it – the Sub Alba for short. Its blooms are not as brilliantly white as the Falling Snow – they actually have a bit of soft pink in them. But their flowers are much bigger than Falling Snow. It can take a couple of years for them to really grow a big strong head, but when they do the amount of flowers they produce is overwhelming.

They do tend to grow out a bit more than Falling Snow so they can get wider, but you can prune them back. The foliage lasts really well and they don’t tend to get diseases or bugs so the leaves will last through to autumn and give you really lovely colour then.

The Sub Alba is our favourite weeping cherry because it grows very strong, is very hardy to wind and heat and is not prone to many bugs or disease. It will grow strong for long and when it is old and covered in big bunches of blossoms it is quite spectacular.

View our Subhirtella alba Weeping Cherries

Subhirtella rosea Weeping Cherry

The Subhirtella rosea is another weeping cherry that nursery people like to shorten the name of to just Sub rosea. It’s a big tree with beautiful, soft pink blossoms. The head of a Sub rosea can grow really quite large, up to 3 or even 3.5 metres wide, but can be controlled by pruning. When they bloom you get this big, full head of flowers that looks like an amazing giant cloud of soft pink. Really, really spectacular. It can grow so large you can end up with a gorgeous canopy of flowers that is delightful to sit under in spring.

The Sub rosea is very adaptable to a wide range of growing conditions including heat and moderate drought, but it’s best kept out of the wind to help it retain its blossoms and autumn leaves for longer. The trunk of the Sub rose will only grow as tall as its graft height so this gives you prediction on how tall it will be.

View our Subhirtella rosea Weeping Cherries

Cheals Weeping Cherry

The weeping cherry is one of the last to blossom in spring. It has quite beautiful, double-petal, pink blossoms which tend to completely cover its bare, loosely handing branches.

The most unique feature of a Cheals weeping cherry is that it unlike other varieties which tend to grow in a definite way, either all the branches cascading down or all the branches growing outward, a Cheals can grow in a very irregular way. Some of the branches may cascade down, while others might tend to grow outwards or even upwards. So it can grow with an asymmetrical look in striking contrast to other varieties or it may grow with some of its branches in one direction giving it some extra character!

In autumn, the Cheals will be awash with colours including beautiful bronzes. It is a lovely feature tree in a large pot or in the garden, but like all weeping cherries, best to plant it in a spot that is not too exposed to the wind.

View our Cheals Weeping Cherries

Mount Fuji/Shimidsu Sakura Grafted Upright Cherry

Strictly speaking the Mount Fuji is not actually a “weeping cherry” at all. It is very similar to a Shimidsu Sakura and both share the same characteristic of growing in a very horizontal manner with their branches reaching out rather than cascading down in a “weeping” fashion.

Where they differ is that the Mount Fuji has a white double flower that grows in hanging bunches of fives or sevens. The Shimidsu Sakura however has flowers that start off kind of a light pink and fade to white. So you get lovely dark pink buds and light pink flowers and white flowers all mixed together.

The Double Flowers of the Mount Fuji Tree


The dark pink buds & light pink to white flowers of the Shimidsu Sakura Tree


Flowers of the Mount Fuji Tree growing in bundles of 5 or 7

The Mount Fuji will tend to grow much wider with longer branches, sometimes up to 3 or 4 metres whereas the Shimidsu will grow in a more compact fashion, but you can of course prune any variety to keep them smaller if you have limited space. With large hanging clusters of three, five or even seven beautiful white blossoms it is no surprise that Mount Fuji is one of the stars of the Annual Japanese Blossom Festival.

Flowers of the Shimidsu Sakura Tree fading from light pink to white


The Mount Fuji with its longer and wider branches compared with the Shimidsu Sakura


The Shimidsu Sakura being more of a compact growing tree

As both of these varieties grow in a more horizontal fashion, they are better suited than other weeping cherries to growing in a cottage garden, where you can plant a whole range of low flowering plants under and around them or even a flowering ground cover like a White Bacopa or a White Arenaria which will give you a lovely effect of matching white flowers below.

View our Mount Fuji Cherry Trees


View our Shimidsu Sakura Trees

Tips for Weeping Cherry planting & maintenance

Watering & Feeding

Most Weeping Cherries are quite hardy and can survive both frosts and drought. While they can struggle a little in extreme summers, if you keep the water up they will thrive. (Weekly watering is OK, with bi-weekly watering if you get a run of long hot days). Feed every 6-8 weeks with something like Osmocote.

Planting

When planting weeping cherries always dig a big, wide hole, fill with lots of potting mix to allow the roots to spread. This helps them find their own water in summer. But conversely they don’t like ground that is too soggy, so plant in soil that will drain well or in a mound above the soil line to help with drainage. And don’t just plant in a small hole in a very heavy clay soil as they won’t do well.

Plenty of Sun

Weeping cherries are not good in too much shade or dappled shade and require a minimum of a half day of full sun to thrive.

Blossom Time

Their blossoms can also be quite long lived, lasting up to six or seven months but sadly they don’t flower all year round.

Keeping the Pests Away

They are mostly disease and pest-free but they can be attacked by pear slug. A simple spray with a mix of pyrethum and dishwashing detergent, sprayed twice over 24 hours on a warm but not hot day will handle this problem.

Long Live the Weeping Cherry

You will get a very long life from a weeping cherry, with many growing for up to 70, 80 or even 90 years, so you will enjoy their beautiful blossoms every spring for decades. No wonder they are so popular as their beauty lasts so long!

In closing

We hope you like our list of the 5 top Weeping Cherries. You will get a very long life from a weeping cherry, with many growing for up to 70, 80 or even 90 years, so you will enjoy their beautiful blossoms every spring for decades. No wonder they are so popular as their beauty lasts so long!

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Many gardeners would say they could easily define some traditional or classic garden styles, like a formal English Garden or a Cottage Garden. But what makes a modern garden a Modern Garden today? With modern housing styles so different from housing styles of the past, what plants, design elements and other features go into making up a modern garden?

The simple truth is that when you start looking at what makes up a Modern Garden these days, it’s hard to define easily. Our resident garden design and horticultural guru Chris ran into this problem recently, when he was asked to do a “clean up” of our Modern Garden category of plants. There were over 600 different plant varieties in there, a literal jungle that was hard to shop in.

A few plants plainly didn’t belong, but he was stumped on the project, until he realised the real problem with defining a Modern Garden and the plants that belong in it. When Chris looked over the many projects he has done as part of our garden design service, he realised that there isn’t just ONE type of Modern Garden. There are really several different themes or styles of Modern Garden that have emerged in Australia over the past few years.

So here you have Chris’ 8 key modern garden styles, so you can pick the one you like the most, or the one that is most suitable for your property.

8 different types of modern gardens:

Modern Minimal Garden

A Minimal Modern garden style is really a reflection of the minimalistic style of modern housing designs. These feature simple lines with big, bold shapes and textures. As the name implies, a minimal garden will feature a small number of plant varieties, perhaps limiting the choice to just three or four, but even sometimes only one or two. It will feature repetition of these handful of plants, and use strong and repetitive shapes in an asymmetrical layout.

It may have a large, trimmed, but naturally shaped plant like a Macrocarpa Cyprus or Creeping Salt Bush that dominates the design. Or a box hedge or Myrtus Luma, again shaped into interesting sculptural shapes used repetitively. Minimalistic gardens also tend to be functional with clearly defined areas where the garden invites you to walk here and sit there, and you can see exactly that. Overall, the look is about pure simplicity that evokes both order and beauty.

Plants for a Modern Minimal garden

Andrew Stark Landscape design with cloud pruned Japanese Maple


Creeping Saltbush pruned


Box and Correa alba balls on a bed of Dichondra repens


Westringea topiary balls


English Box Topiary Balls


View more Modern Minimal plants

Modern Fusion Garden

Just like a minimalistic garden, a Modern Fusion Garden is defined by its constraints, but those constraints are not so obvious. There is order but it’s balanced by some disorder too. What you are trying to do is combine things that you wouldn’t normally put together to create a sense of the unexpected.

The idea of a Modern Fusion garden is to have a large feature with one or two really dramatic plants, then a few surprising plants that become the supporting act to the main feature. So, you might feature a Cloud Pruned Lilly Pilly in the centre of the garden, with Correa alba clipped into large balls around it and then beyond that, Senkaki Maples and Scleranthus Lime Lava for ground cover.

Plants for a Modern Fusion garden

Senkaki (Coral Bark) maples make a striking feature in all seasons


Scleranthus Biflorus ‘Lime Lava’ forms gently undulating mounds


Spreading Cotyledon Silver Waves Succulent has a striking shape & texture


Sedum ‘Autumn Joy’ has both bold colour and shape


Senecio serpens blue chalk sticks are a spreading succulent with striking form


A tree aloe, aloe barberae, in a 200 Litre size for an instant feature


View more Modern Fusion plants

Modern Layered Garden

As the name suggests, a Modern Layered Garden features repetitive planting of plants at an increasing height, moving back. Beginning with ground covers, each row of plants increases in height in stepped layers, the one behind being a little, or a lot, taller than the one in front of it. With a Modern Layered Garden you can choose to keep the layers in similar tones of green, but with subtle changes of texture and contrast between the layers. You can also have one layer that flowers or is of a contrasting colour just to break it up. Think of a range of heights starting from ground cover up to six metres of height at the rear.

So, you might start with a ground cover like an Asiatic Jasmine for example, then perhaps a low English Box hedge, with another medium hedge behind it then up to a taller hedge behind it, like a Ficus hedge. But if you have a wall or fence, you can also incorporate this into the layered design, perhaps with something like a Boston Ivy growing on it. Or you can simply leave it as it is, and it will become the final layer of your garden design itself.

Plants for a Modern Layered garden

Stunning pleached Ornamental screening hedge by Andrew Stark Landscape Design


Pleached ficus hedging using Ficus ‘Flash’


Portuguese Laurel medium hedge


Pleached portuguese laurel


Boston Ivy is self adhering and will cover walls easily


Canary Island Ivy makes a lush and low maintenance groundcover in a layered garden


View more Modern Layered plants

Modern Green & White Garden

One way to ensure your garden stays relatively timeless is to use the classic colour combination which is the “little black dress” of the gardening world: the Modern Green & White garden. Using green and white as dominant colours in a garden have always worked beautifully together to give it a very classy and sophisticated look. There are so many plants to choose from when creating a modern garden with a green and white theme that even with this limited colour palette, there is still room for diverse style and creative expression.

For a simple way of creating a Modern Green & White garden, follow the basic concept of a layered garden, but for your white plants choose a White Carpet Rose that flowers most of the year, keep the white there. Alternatively, there are Iceberg Roses and Gardenias and Orange Jessamines (which are white not orange!). You could also choose white Hydrangeas like the Annabelle variety, which are pure white and show right through Spring and Summer. Since you are layering you can use taller rose bushes or even trees like an Ornamental Pear. If you want to use green trees, a Linden Tree is a great backdrop.

Plants for a Modern Green & White garden

Asiatic jasmine used as a grouncover in a modern layered garden


Layered garden with Little Gem Magnolia, Gardenia magnifica and a Japanese Box hedge


White Hydrangea annabelle flowering


White trunks of the classic Moss White Silver Birch


Long Flowering White Carpet Rose


Brilliany white Snowball Agapanthus


View more Modern Green & White plants

Modern Green & White Garden, with a touch of colour

Another twist on the Modern Garden with a Green & White theme is to incorporate just a touch of another colour to add a subtle variation to it. You keep the overall theme of Green & White but you keep it simple and add one more colour. The idea is not to go over the top by adding lots of different colours, just a single extra hue for a bit of contrast and interest.

So you might add some climbing Wisterias to your garden for their soft purple tones or some Salvias with their striking rich blue. For another touch of purple, you might choose an Atropurpureum Maple or a Forest Pansy with its pink blossom and purple leaves in summer. You might like something golden like an Abelia Kalediscope or something silver like a Silver Bush or a Licorice Helichrysum.

Plants to give a touch of colour to a Modern Green & White garden

Wisteria sinensis adds a a pale purple hue


Forest Pansy adds a deep purple with heart shaped leaves


Convolvulus cneorum Silver Bush in flower


Helichrysum “Liquorice Plant”


Acer palmatum atropurpureum Purple Japanese Maple


Purple flowering salvias


View more plants that add a touch of colour

Modern Sculptural Garden

Creating a Modern Sculptural Garden can be a bit of a challenge. Some people can make the mistake of buying lots of sculptural plants then trying to put them all together and it just creates a disharmony. So again, the theme for this kind of garden is simplicity and using a maximum of three different types of plants in each section, with only one type of sculptural plant.

For example, your sculptural plant could be something with a very definite shape, like an American Aloe (Century Plant) or a Gymea Lily or a Mexican Giant Spear Lily. All very dramatic looking plants. Or you could choose a cloud pruned Olive or cloud pruned Lilly Pilly.

You can either trim the plant into something sculptural, or use plants that are already created by nature as a sculpture. Use these plants as your focus, and then have something less dramatic that “steps down” from that, because you don’t want too much visual drama going on. You might use White Creeping Thyme as a ground cover or Westringia cut into balls or Creeping Salt Bush cut into gentle shapes. The idea is to fill the spaces in between the strong visually sculptural plants with some simpler plants that become the support act for the main show.

Plants for a Modern Sculptural Garden

Agave attenuata


English Box topiary balls


Agave El Miradores Gold


Cloud pruned Myrtus luma


200L Advanced Tree aloe ready for delivery


Doryanthes excelsa Gymea Lily


View more Modern Sculptural plants

Modern Australian Native Garden

The hallmark of Australian Native Gardens that took off in the late 60s and early 70s was that they quickly became overgrown jungles. You almost had to use a machete to get through them to your front door! But the Modern Native Garden stands in stark contrast to those of the past, mostly because the careful breeding and selection of Australian natives over the years now gives you smaller, prettier versions of the same plants. The discipline now for a Modern Australian Native garden is to restrict yourself to just three or five plants. You don’t want it all to grow wildly and fill up all the space. Or, if you do, try a Cottage Style Native Australian Garden.

So you might start with a “Little John” Callistemon which grows just 80 cm tall and the same width or a Casuarina “Cousin It” plant which grows flat on the ground. Then you might choose a Kangaroo Paw, but one of the newer varieties that doesn’t grow to 6 feet tall.

Whatever you choose for your taller plants, the idea is to trim off the bottom branches so you can see through to the ground cover or lower plants. This is how you create space in the garden. The great news is that a Modern Native Garden can grow in a very small garden space, if you follow a few rules. Keep the number of plants down to three, four or five at most, choose the smaller varieties, and don’t over plant. Keep lots of space there.

Plants for a Modern Native garden

Banksia Roller Coaster


Pycnosorus Billy buttons flowering


Small Kangaroo Paws, Bush Dance or Royal Cheer


Silver Princess Eucalyptus


Acacia mini cog


Native Australian compact Cushion Bush


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Modern Grass Garden

Today there are lots of native grasses on the market and a lot of them are not only hardy but very attractive. And you can mix them up with exotic(non-native) grasses as well, and that’s how you create the Modern Grass Garden. Once again, keep it simple. Select only three to five different types of grasses. And follow the rule of the bigger the area you are covering, the more you should stick to just one variety of grass for that patch.

Don’t “salt and pepper” your grasses with too many varieties mixed up in the same space. You are trying to create a block of yellow here, then a block of red over there, then a block of silver and a block of green. Try to keep the grasses in blocks. In a larger area, increase the size of the block of each type of grass, rather than adding more types of gasses.

With big areas try to choose nice soft grasses like Tanika or Swamp Foxtail Grass that look lovely waving in the wind. Maybe add some Banksia Marginata for some contrast in among the grasses or some Mexican Spear Lily. Don’t forget that a few big rocks here and there work well in a Modern Grass Garden. Again, keep it simple, not too many different plants in the one space and it will all work beautifully.

Plants for a Modern Grass garden

A trolley of Lomandra Tanika


Festuca glauca Blue Fescue Grass


Carex Frosted Curls


Carex Orange Sedge


Green Fountain Grass Pennesitum setaceum


Lomandra Little Con


Lomandra Seascape


Carex Blue Sedge


Pennisetum alopecuroides ‘Nafray’ Swamp Foxtail Grass


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Feeling inspired to create your own Modern Garden, but want some expert advice? Try our one-on-one garden design service with Chris. Together you’ll come up with a selection of plants along with a layout plan that gives you the look you want, as well as being suitable for your local soil and conditions.

get your own tailored modern garden design:

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In closing

We hope you like these 8 different Modern Garden styles. If you’d like to create your own modern garden masterpiece, but are not sure if the plants mentioned here will be right for your soil, shade or general conditions, Victorian residents can get a a Free Garden Design with Chris. He will work with you to help you choose the perfect plants for your Modern Garden, whichever style you prefer.

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