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Tips for planning a new productive garden from scratch | Gardening 101 | Gardening Australia

Gardening Australia 34,558 3 years ago
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Hannah shares design tips and tricks to maximise abundance and beauty in a new productive garden. Subscribe 🔔 http://ab.co/GA-subscribe Creating a garden from scratch can be daunting. No matter what size or shape your space is, it’s worth considering a few key aspects before you start planting to get on the right path. Hannah takes us through the layout of a new suburban garden that makes the most of its limitations and resources. Water: Water is essential to your plants! Start by researching how much rainfall you receive in your area, to get an idea of what plants are suitable. Observe how rain moves across the site too – steep slopes may benefit from terracing, to slow the flow of water, passively watering your plants. In this garden, retaining walls were built using large boulders that double as seating and space for rockery plantings. Plants that require a lot of water such as annual vegies, are best closest to the water source for maximum efficiency. Microclimates: There can be different amounts of water, sun, and shelter throughout the garden, so you need to get creative with different solutions. In the winter shade cast by this house, they have planted deciduous fruit trees and shrubs as they only need the summer sun to flourish. Winter flowering perennials and bulbs are used underneath ensure there’s colour at all times. Further up the back there is no shelter from the sun, so a creative pergola was built. Grape vines and kiwi fruit will eventually create a green ceiling to protect both plants and people during the heat of summer. To provide privacy and protection from strong southerly winds, evergreen fruit trees and native shrubs will create a lush border around the fence line once established. Multi-functionality: An essential design principle is creating spaces and structures that have multiple functions. Chickens do a lot more than laying eggs! They eat food scraps and green waste, eat weeds before they take over, and a deep litter compost is created from straw and chicken poo that will eventually feed the vegie patch. A worm farm can be multi-functional too – here an old bathtub inside a timber frame double as a seat and workbench. Waste: In a well-planned garden, there is no such thing as waste – everything has value and is put back into the system. No garden is complete without compost. This garden has accessible paths so you can get a wheelbarrow of waste right up to the compost bays that are next to the main vegie beds – where you’ll use it most. There are also in-ground worm buckets. Before you head to the nursery for plants, pick up a pen and paper to do some quick sketches and spend time observing and dreaming up your perfect garden. ___________________________________________ Gardening Australia is an ABC TV program providing gardening know-how and inspiration. Presented by Australia's leading horticultural experts, Gardening Australia is a valuable resource to all gardeners through the television program, the magazine, books, DVDs and extensive online content. Watch more: http://iview.abc.net.au/programs/gardening-australia Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/gardeningaustralia Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/gardeningaustralia Web: http://www.abc.net.au/gardening ___________________________________________ This is an official Australian Broadcasting Corporation YouTube channel. Contributions may be removed if they violate ABC's Online Conditions of Use http://www.abc.net.au/conditions.htm (Section 3).

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