Have you ever tried expressing yourself to another person in a language that's not quite natural for you?

You try to tell them that 'you enjoy their friendship' but it comes out as though 'you want to pick their nose with a gigantic pitchfork' - or worse! Often the meaning gets lost in translation.

It's exactly the same with flowers. Each flower has its own meaning and communicates a different message when being given as a gift. You certainly wouldn't take a red rose to a funeral or give a black tulip to the mother-of-the-bride - though she may give you one. So while a flower given as a gift can mean the world to the person receiving it, it can also mean end of yours if it's taken the wrong way.

Rather than take the risk, I've compiled a little list of more than 300 flowers and their meanings. [If I've missed any, email me and I'll update it immediately].

Disclaimer: As there are many of these lists residing in cyberspace I haven't referenced any particular one that I have accessed these meanings from. Each of these lists seem to carry a few of each others and there is no referencing in place. If I have inadvertently taken a meaning from your site and your are the original owner please don't hesitate to contact me and shall append the referencing.

Posted by Stuart at 12:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

There is nothing more delicious than gardening vegetables in your own plot of soil. As soon as you harvest your vegies you can be eating them without any concern for pesticides, herbicides and any other 'cides' that may have come in contact with your fresh produce.

Not only that, they are dead simple to plant and grow and anybody can do it and achieve a good level of success. Gardening your own vegetables is even a great way to get the kids involved and introducing them to the soil, seeds and enjoying the harvest.

Mother Earth Living has come up with a list of 10 best crops to grow for beginners. They're not all vegetables but we can live with that. So, while it's a great list there are a couple I thought that should have made it.

Here's Mother Earth Living's list;

1. Radishes.
2. Salad greens (lettuce, spinach, arugula and corn salad).
3. Green beans.
4. Onions.
5. Strawberries.
6. Peppers.
7. Bush zucchini.
8. Tomatoes.
9. Basil.
10. Potatoes.

and to add to this;

11. Carrots. What vegetable garden would be complete without carrots? They are extremely easy to sow and cultivate. The best tip I've seen for sowing carrots is to mix the seed with some coarse river sand in a small jar. Shake until they're well mixed and then poke a hole the size of your index finger in the lid. Slowly pour this mix along the drills that you've prepared and cover over. Too easy.

12. Sweet Potatoes If you're going to grow potatoes, then sweet potatoes aren't any harder. Cut a chunk off a shop-bought variety - ensuring that the chunk exhibits a few eyes - and plant below the surface the same as a potato. They are such a bountiful crop that you will be rewarded well for planting these.

13. Pumpkins I can't believe this list missed out pumpkins. One of the easiest crops to grow and with such a large seed it's a piece of cake to try and sow. You can even collect the seed from your own pumpkin, dry them out and plant in early spring to late summer.

14. Aubergine/ Eggplant Aubergines can be picked up as seedlings at most nurseries and planted as soon as the soil warms up. With 8-12 weeks you'll have a prolific harvest of eggplants that look great in the garden but are far better grilled and on your plate.

15. Squash Not a big favourite with most vegetable gardeners, it is still a great crop to grow - even if you end up giving the produce to your neighbours. There are so many varieties of squash available now that trying a few new ones might even change your mind about them. Plant out as seedlings at the start of spring and you'll be picking within 6-8 weeks.

Gardening vegetables can be so rewarding. Knowing how they grow and what you did to produce them is extremely satisfying. And, it should reduce your food bill.

Posted by Stuart at 3:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I always have a chuckle when I hear the joke, "What's the difference between broccoli and snot?" No ideas? Answer: "It's harder to get kids to eat broccoli." Boom, boom.

In actual fact, it may be more aligned to your genetic makeup than we've possibly ever considered.

Susan Bowerman, from the LA Times, tells us however, that this may not excuse kids from turning their nose up at vegetables. It seems that being a super-taster takes some time to evolve.

So if you're not into strong tasting-coffee, soy products or grapefruit juice you can thank your genes for making you the super-taster that you are.

Interesting to note that more women than men are super-tasters and so are most chefs!

Posted by Stuart at 5:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Hours and hours of back-breaking, blister-inducing, sweat-covered work have finally culminated in the garden that you have always dreamed about. The garden structures are completed, the plants are melding beautifully and the piece d'resistance (a tacky $29.95 concrete garden ornament) is in place.

Whoa! Roll back the video...Is this another B-grade horror movie?

Unfortunately not. It seems to happen more often than not as gardeners succumb to making bad choices on garden ornaments.

Consider choosing a garden sculpture or ornament the same way a painter considers a frame. Or, with the same creative eye that a chef uses to garnish an extraordinary meal. These professionals would never choose 'tacky'.

It appears to me that gardeners choose garden ornaments based on a few selective criteria; price, purchasing convenience, and fads. Yet, all three have nothing to do with gardening. Even less they don't take into account your specific garden and how you can enhance it to give it the WOW factor.

So here are the criteria I use to choose garden ornaments for my garden;

• Originality - The question I ask myself is, "Will someone point to my garden ornaments and say, 'Did you pick them up at Bunnings?'" Of course you can't stop the person completely devoid of any gardening acumen asking this question but most gardeners should be able to spot that it's an original piece.

  And, by 'original' I don't mean expensive one-offs that were hand-sculptured by Alexandros of Antioch.

  Originality usually means a garden ornament that you won't find in every second backyard. It needs to show that I've really thought about this ornament and it enhances my garden more with it than without it.



• Continues the story... Let me give an example here to better explain this point. One of my 'garden rooms' is planted entirely with Australian natives - correas, grevilleas, banksias etc. If I were to put a concrete garden ornament in the shape of a lion amidst my wattles this would look completely stupid. Why? Because the last time a lion was seen hiding in Australian flora was when the last one escaped from the circus.

  It goes without saying. If you have a japanese garden then use japanese garden ornaments - and I don't mean that they're made in Japan.

  Find garden ornaments that continue the story that you're trying to portray based on your landscaping features and plantings.



• Made from materials that continue the story... Not all garden ornaments are made alike. If most of your garden has been landscaped using wrought iron or rusting copper then using a concrete urn may border on the sublime.

  For the same reason, if you've landscaped a Mediterranean garden with terracotta everything, then using a sculpture constructed from aluminum or stainless steel is going to look a little out of place.

  Try using garden ornaments made from materials that fit in with their surroundings. This will make them less obvious and they won't stand out like the proverbial 'pimple on a naked bum'.

Obviously price is still an important factor and you wouldn't pay a fortune for one if it's likely to be vandalised or broken by your children. Many of our garden ornaments have been sourced for free or quite inexpensively because we've taken the time to look around or be creative.

Your garden ornaments could be the special thing that creates the WOW factor or they could let the side down and make your garden look cheap and tacky. Choose wisely.

Posted by Stuart at 4:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Jordan (aka Fred), our eldest son, turns 11 on Wednesday and already he's begun his own blog. He's a Lego freak and combined with his Star Wars obsession he's rolled the two passions into creating his own online presence.

He's so cool and I really like enjoy his posts. He's currently working on a little slideshow cartoon involving some of his Lego men. It's not finished yet but should be up on his blog very soon.

Head over to his blog Fred's Lego Creations and say hello...

Posted by Stuart at 8:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Only one week out from autumn and our plants are already gearing up for a break. And who would blame them? They've been flowering their little heads off and deserve a well-earned rest...

Feel free to make suggestions or comment on what you've seen.

Posted by Stuart at 7:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

• Patrick from Bifurcated Carrots (Bifurcated means forked or tongued as in what happens to a carrot when it collides with a rock as it's growing) has written a helpful post on understanding the Latin terms used for plants.


• John Curtin, the star behind Spade Work: From Plot to Plate gives some dates for those UK gardeners who want to volunteer for Thrive. Thrive are an organisation that help physically and mentally challenged people find joy in gardening and are certainly a very worthwhile cause to invest some time into.


• Concrete and Calendula's, Christa demonstrates how not to grow rosemary.


• Andrea, from California's Heavy Petal shows off a new product that might just be the answer for those wanting to grow some hydroponic plants indoors - and have too much money laying around and don't know what to do with it.


• Nelumbo from the Garden Blog (of a gal growing Southern) reviews some of the great gardening TV shows that are around at the moment. Great tips for those who are cuddled in front of the fire while the snow falls around them.


• and finally, Maggie Wang from You Grow Girl has compiled this great MS Excel spreadsheet appropriately named The lazy gardener's automatic seed starting chart. Very easy to use and she even has an option if you don't possess Excel software.

Posted by Stuart at 1:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Most gardeners don't build fences for the sake of it. There is always a reason. Some erect a barrier between neighbours, others try to block out unwanted views while some may build a fence merely as a decorative ornament. Whatever the cause, the garden fence has been as much a part of gardening as compost and earthworms.

I'm not sure how it works in other countries but in Australia the boundary garden fence is owned by both sets of neighbours. The installation, upkeep and maintenance and any legal obligations are shared by both parties. This can be good but it also has it's down sides too.

For instance, our home was the last to be built in the street so our neighbours had already erected fences around their properties. With four bordering lots we found ourselves with four different garden fences. All similar style but each one was a different colour. Then we received four bills asking for our half share for the cost of materials and installation. Nice...

Yet, while these fences have kept our home and garden private we still manage to interact with the neighbours and sustain healthy relationships with them.

But for some, this isn't always the case. The garden fence can actually become the common denominator in "neighbourhood rage".

Most councils allow home owners to remove any part of a plant or tree that oversteps its boundary and invades your garden. Which is all helpful unless you have a crotchety gardener next door abusing you when you try to prune that invasive hardenbergia.

Or, worse still the neighbours next door have no intention or desire to garden and their unkempt yard produces more seeds than Yates. It's worth checking your local council bylaws to understand your neighbourly rights on your side of the fence.

It's not all bad though. In Britain it's been reported that more than 50% of neigbours enjoy a gossip over the garden fence. Considering that our lives are becoming more reclusive and introverted this is an encouraging statistic.

Maybe we might consider building lower fences and be better neighbours in the future. But not too low just in case we see things we may not want to see.

Posted by Stuart at 4:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Man is a tool-using Animal. Nowhere do you find him without tools; without tools he is nothing, with tools he is all.
Thomas Carlyle - BrainyQuote

When you begin gardening as a hobby, getting all the garden tools can be insanely expensive if you're planning to buy them straight off the shelf at your local Bunnings or Home Depot. Yet there are far cheaper ways to stock your garden shed without buying brand name equipment.

Without sharing those juicy tips too early, you may want to ponder firstly what is needed. There's no use buying a trench-digger if you're never planning to dig trenches. And, a range of hoes for every possible occasion may border on overkill.

Remembering that you're on a tight budget, limiting your tool selection is a necessary evil.

But, how do you go about getting cheap, yet reliable, garden tools. Here's some tips 'n' ideas;

• Visit estate auctions - usually when a loved one dies their estate including any personal effects is handed over to an auctioneer to sell. The funds raised are then split between the legal recipients and the estate is wound up.

  Usually their personal effects are sold at severely discounted prices because there is no other market for them. Further more, they are usually good quality items because they were looked after by a previous gardener.



• Bankruptcy or closing-down auctions - unfortunately, from time to time, small hardware businesses will hit the wall - mainly because they couldn't compete with the likes of Lowes, Home Depot and Bunnings. While it may seem that you're picking the carcass off a dying animal, the realisation is that the animal is dead and the meat is going to go to waste anyway.


• Shire or Council Sales - shires and local councils often update their equipment and therefore may offload some of the gardening tools that in your opinion are fine. Keep abreast of your local newspaper and these will pop up on occasions.


• Hire some of your tools - some tools are just too expensive and you will probably only use them once or twice. Don't fork out a small fortune for them. Instead, seek out hire businesses where you can rent them for the period of time needed.


• Borrow them from friends - if you're organised enough you could create a group of friends who all pitch in and buy a share of a garden tool or you each buy a different garden tool and swap it between each other.
  

These are just a few options and I'm sure there are others. How have you resourced your gardening hobby when on a limited budget?

Posted by Stuart at 5:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

The Olympic Games - this insane festival of sport aimed at forcing countries into logistical nightmares and higher levels of debt - is approaching the UK for 2012. All fine if you can sit in front of the TV and watch the highlights oblivious to the destruction that was caused for your viewing pleasure.

Our governments purport environmental change; sign the Kyoto agreement and barrage those that don't; espouse the goodness of "An Inconvenient Truth" and talk up decisions to improve the world's worsening climate. Yet, when it all comes down to it - money is still the winner.

And it will win again to the detriment of some 100 year old garden allotments at Manor Garden.

See, the problem is that Manor Garden lies smack-bang in the middle of an already congested Olympic Village design. Fortunately for the designers and landscape architects it has very little effect. A few bulldozers and other earth moving equipment and the problem...well, it's no longer a problem.

Look on the bright side. After the four weeks of Olympic hysteria the allotments will be returned to their rightful owners and they can continue as if nothing happened. Albeit their 100-year old plum trees will no longer exist. The soil will be severely compacted and the micro-climate that's taken more than a century to create and maintain will no longer be present.

Apart from that there should be no problems.

According to lifeisland.org this is not where the rot will end;

The fundamental flaw in the Olympic masterplan is that it responds to the Lords of the Olympics rather than to the opportunities that the site offers as a legacy for London.. In other words, the failure of landscape planning taking the lead role to respond to the existing legacy and providing for its upgrading to the benefits of East London. The scale of the opportunity has not been realised and there is a distinct danger that it will suffer, like Sydney, with the difficulty of trying to find a legacy and the finance after the damage has been done. Few Olympic Cities have cash left after the event to invest in this. The morning after the night before is generally a depressing moment.

Money wins again. And the moment it runs out the problems will continue to fester.

Fortunately that's not my problem. London's more than 14,000km away from Busselton so it's not in my backyard. Plus, I only plan to watching the opening and closing ceremonies and a few of the basketball matches. You probably need to tell someone who cares...

Well it may be time to care?

Take some time to read what others are saying about this debacle here and here. And then go and sign the petition... [Note: You must be a British citizen to sign it]

But for those who can't sign, use your blogging voice to create a groundswell throughout the blogosphere. This hypocritical environmental destruction needs to end.

Posted by Stuart at 4:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The moment someone mentions the word "frangipani" my nostrils begin to seek that aroma as if it were a natural physical attraction. For once you've breathed in the fragrance of these flowers there's no going back - it will become indelibly stamped upon your senses.

But then for the remainder of the year the plant looks like a naked twig taking up space that could be occupied by something far more productive.

It's this love/hate relationship I have frangipani's. When it's flowering there is no competitor. When it's not you could try to hide the stems with aluminum foil and it would still gain more respect.

I'm yet to plant one in my garden for that very reason - and for the reason that most people plant them awkwardly in their gardens. I'm over the idea that they should reside next to a bed of roses or competing against a rampant plumbago. Or worse still, they protrude from their lonely position in a bed of sand (not soil) by some gardener who thought they got lucky with the "plant-of-the-century."

No folks, the frangipani needs to be grown as an architectural plant. Or, at the very last within a tropical grouping surrounded by flowering canna lillies, bromeliads or tillandsias.

In it's natural environment the frangipani grows wild in Central and South America - picture the climate! Warm tropical days where frost is never present. Frangipani would grow well in most coastal areas around Australia and the lower third of the US. If kept indoors it may even be grown quite successfully in most other parts as well.

Plumeria rubra, it's scientific name, are available as evergreens - although you rarely see them growing - as most specimens are deciduous. They can grow to nearly 8m (26ft) or more and span 3-4m(13ft), resembling a phallic sculpture during their dormant season.

Their gorgeously fragranted flowers aren't just limited to the common white with yellow centres either. They range from dusted apricots through coral pinks and even extend the palette through to dark reds which makes their desirability even greater.

How to propagate frangipani

Frangipani are one of the easiest plants to propagate and grow, which is why so many would-be-gardeners have stuck them in the ground.

During the winter months, when the plant is dormant, take a cutting about half the length of your arm and leave it in the sun to dry. When the wounded end has calloused over plant this part into a free-draining potting mix and leave in a warm, sunny spot. Come spring, the propagated frangipani shall begin to produce foliage, but may not display any flowers for the first year or two.

Where to grow frangipani

Be creative. Remembering that for most of the year it has no foliage or flowers, the stems can seem quite ugly and unattractive if planted in the wrong place.

As mentioned previously, mix them with some other flowering tropicals or palms that can accentuate their design qualities. You could even display your frangipani against a feature wall by contrasting the bare branches against a bold colour.

But, whatever you do don't just stick it in the middle or some flowering ornamentals. They look stupid.

Posted by Stuart at 4:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (13)

Your garden, if it's anything like mine, is a powerful source of downtime. It's a place where one can hermit-ize themselves from the outdoor world and refuel, taking time to reflect and refocus my thoughts.

There have been many times when life has countered some body blows and I've found that an hour sitting in my garden has completely altered my perspective on the situation.

And as I've reflected on what parts of the garden aid this meditative process I've since found that there are a number of design elements that work for me, and you may find work for you and your garden as well.

Before I disclose them, it might be worth mentioning that I'm not talking about zen gardens, feng shui or creating your garden as some shrine to a little known god. I'm talking more about designing a garden that helps you to stop and 'smell the roses' - so to speak - and being able to collect your thoughts in a safe refuge.

So how do you go about creating it? Here are some elements that I find work really well;

1. Shade - perhaps it's just because I'm a gloomy person that I prefer to sit in darkness. Not really. It's the dappled shade and the way a tree canopy can filter light and dynamically alter it via its movement that seems to work.


2. No visible fences - its not possible for most gardeners to remove their boundaries and cast their eyes over the rolling hills. However, it is possible to completely cover your fences with living plants so that they can't be seen. I find this is a big part of being able to reflect in your garden is to feel that there are no limitations to your refuge world.


3. Running water - in a meditative garden one of the key elements is to have the sound of water running in the background. This is why many people now include water features in their landscape. It shouldn't be a gushing waterfall but just a gentle trickle.


4. Wind chimes - now these are not my idea of a meditative element. In fact, if wind chimes were in my garden I would have throttled them with a hammer within half an hour. But, some people find them very relaxing and enjoy hearing the breeze orchestrate a small symphony in their gardens.


5. Relaxing chairs - adding some relaxation chairs such as the ever comfortable Adirondack chairs, a banana lounge or a rope hammock can really set the mood and put you in a meditative frame of mind - that is, if you don't fall asleep.


6. Add some birds to the setting - you don't have to create your own aviary to enjoy birds in your garden. Many gardeners choose to tempt the native birdlife by erecting a bird feeder or locating a bird bath for them to preen themselves in. However, their gentleness and unflustered lifestyle can be a real boost for a meditation garden.

So there are a few design elements I've known to work for me. There may be others that you find helpful as well and I'd love to hear what other elements you would put in a meditation garden.

Whatever they are the purpose of the garden is to be a mediative refuge where you can escape the hustle and bustle of the outside world and reflect on the things that are wonderful.

Posted by Stuart at 4:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)