A colourful garden full of spring bulbs | Garden Design and Inspiration | Gardening Australia

Jane returns to the colourful garden of florist Petrina Burrill to see how it looks when full of spring bulbs. Subscribe 🔔 http://ab.co/GA-subscribe
Every year Petrina plants thousands of bulbs and now she’s reaping the benefits. In the front garden are brightly coloured tulips, which she buys fresh every year, preparing the bed for the season with loads of compost for healthy soil.

In the back, Petrina plants ranunculi en masse, many with 3-4 flowers per plant, so the overall effect is stunning. The double blooms almost resemble roses, especially the pink forms, but there are also white, yellow, red and all the shades in between.

Petrina fell in love with colourful flowers as a child exploring her great-grandmother’s garden, and her grandfather continued the plant-growing tradition as a professional gardener. Petrina’s mother was always giving away bunches of flowers to people, and now Petrina’s children also love picking flowers from the garden.

There are several flowering cherries – they may only flower for a few short weeks but for Petrina the delicate display is worth it. Many are in large pots on the deck to create a canopy of blossom.

The area by the house is dominated by a huge wisteria, which Petrina trains so that the flowering branches envelop the pergola.

And bunches of blooms are still regularly given away to continue giving the gift of flowers and colour.

Featured plants:
Tulip ‘Sri Chinmoy’ (Tulipa cv.)
Tulip ‘Renown’ (Tulipa cv.)
Tulip ‘Orange Balloon’ (Tulipa cv.)
Ranunculus ‘Light Pink’ (Ranunculus cv.)
Ranunculus ‘Salmon’ (Ranunculus cv.)
Cherry ‘Mt Fuji’ (Prunus cv.)
Wisteria (Wisteria cv.)
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JANE: Part-time florist and full-time home gardener, Petrina Burrill is as joyous and colourful as her garden in Melbourne’s leafy north-eastern suburb of Ivanhoe. For me, one of those, would you believe, is watermelons. Hello. Hi, Jane. Good to see you. Welcome back. Thank you. I’m really looking forward to seeing what’s changed

Since I was last here. You’re not going to recognise her. But today, that’s all going to change. Now I’m not going to grow one of these big varieties. Instead, I’m going for some heirloom small varieties, This really is a kaleidoscope of colour, isn’t it? You’ll see a completely different garden now.

So much more colour and life. And this time we’ve gone bulbs and ranuncs and tulips everywhere. Watermelons prefer well-drained soils, It certainly is vibrant. Those tulips are amazing. Aren’t they incredible? Look at this little one, I love her. She’s a parrot, but just the colours.

I feel like I’m in Hawaii when I see her. And this beautiful hot pink one here. I love her. And then beside her, we have the Orange Balloon. Oh, I love orange. That’s gorgeous. Isn’t she wonderful? With the dark inside like that. Mm. My goodness. What gives you such success with the tulips?

Oh, well, I’m just lucky, I think. I buy them fresh from the farm each year, and the punch comes in the bulb all ready to go. And the soil. I prep the soil beforehand as well. So make sure I put the compost through it every time I turn

The garden beds over each season, put that goodness back into the soil. It’s all about that soil health to get that beautiful looking flower. Well, you’ve got a show and a half. Come and have a look through the back. Oh, I’d love to. Thank you.

You might pick up some offcuts of larger reo mesh from a salvage yard. Either way, they’ll last for years and can be used again and again. So this is the back garden, Jane. Oh, my goodness gracious! (LAUGHS) Mind your head. Exactly. Gosh, the colour is just everywhere. Aren’t they incredible?

It’s an amazing site. What intrigues you about a ranunculus? Well, I just love her en masse. I just think she just brings so much sunshine and happiness when you plant so many of them in a small space. And each stem has a good 4 or 5 flowers on it.

Yes. And this one, Jane, look, she’s in her third week now. They almost look translucent towards the end. Beautiful. Wow. Now, this one is a beauty. It looks really more like a rose, doesn’t it, in a way? Or a camellia. Well, that’s it. Some people often say, “Oh, your roses are out.” They look so similar. But they’re a common old ranunculus. Absolutely. The old-fashioned ranuncs. You don’t see too many of them these days. I love their colour though. She’s beautiful. I noticed a really different one over here. She’s incredible. This one looks like she’s dipped her little head in a paint pot.

(LAUGHS) That’s right. Would you say that they’re – ranunculus – they’re really simple plants to grow? Definitely, I think so. You just pop them in. They need the sunshine. You don’t need too much water. And then, wow! Watch the magic appear. (LAUGHS) That’s great.

Two on each side and each about a metre apart. There’s no real order, there’s no real system. So I just pop in the tulips and… Tulip, ranunc, tulip, ranunc, or clump tulips. And then I just let Mother Nature do her work. And that is pretty extraordinary,

Because Mother Nature usually does it pretty well, doesn’t it? She does. She does. So I know I do plant close together, but that’s because I want a really big show. Ah, very good. Yes. So how many? How many bulbs are in here? This is just amazing. (LAUGHS) 8,000, Jane. 8,000.

Oh, get on. Yes. Petrina’s love of gardening began in her great-grandmother’s garden in the New South Wales Riverina town of Mathoura when she was four years old. And I remember looking up into her larkspurs and seeing her delphiniums and just this little dot. And I remember looking up, and that’s how…

I sometimes think that’s what I’ve re-created, this little fairy tale. And I remember walking through the flowers, and she taught me at a very young age, well, that’s the joy of gardening. And then her son went on to be the gardener at the Mathoura Shire. So he was a gardener.

And then he passed that down to Mum, who passed that down to me. And you’ve got a little memento of your grandpa. Yes. His wheelbarrow. So he… I remember being young and it would always be full of flowers out the front. The tradition continues with Petrina passing on the love of gardening

To her daughter, Adelaide. We often come into the gardens on the weekends now, and she has her own patch where she can grow whatever she likes, and she chooses whatever she wants to put in there. And she’s watched me from a very young age, you know, digging in the garden.

They’ve grown up around flowers, both of the children, but Adelaide in particular. So she’ll then just take off, start weeding or start digging and putting in seedlings or growing from seed. Mm. Yeah. And she loves it. And then watching nature just grow. And does she look after them when they’ve popped up?

She does, she does. She then loves to cut them. And she’s always putting flowers by our bed, which is beautiful. Or as Mum taught us, we would always have dinner and there’d always be flowers in the middle of the table, which was beautiful. And now Adelaide does that.

Or if I forgot, Adelaide’s gone and done that for us. And it reminds us the joy and the love that little posies can bring, you know. And Mother Nature, there she is. Mm. Petrina also adores the trees in her garden. How amazing. What a sight that is. Isn’t she just a beauty?

Yeah. Amazing. So she’s my Mount Fuji, Cherry, and she’s around 15 years old. Oh, and people say, “Oh, Cherries are so beautiful, but they’re very fleeting.” You know, they come into flower and then they’re gone. But that’s what I love about her, Jane.

Two and a half weeks at the most, if I’m lucky. But for this spectacular show, it doesn’t get better than this. But then you’ve got other Cherries around, too. Yes, yes, I put them in the wine barrels, which I find they do well, because I like to try and create

A room of blossoms around me on the deck. On the deck. It’s just lovely. So that’s another Standard? That’s another Standard. Yeah. That’s a beauty, isn’t it? She’s beautiful. Mount Fuji Standard. Wow. It really decorates this… Just gives it a lovely feeling on this deck.

That’s it. She’s the centrepiece to the garden, I like to call her. That is a sight for sore eyes, isn’t it? Isn’t she a show? (LAUGHS) That wisteria is something else. How old is it? Oh, she’s 40 years this year. Oh! Yeah. So I was lucky enough to inherit her.

And just look at those racemes, just hanging down like that. And the bees… And the bees love it. Absolutely love it. So you actually train her up the roof, Jane. I grow her up the roof because I want these long canes to come through. So I just let her go.

It’s also easy for me because less work. I just let her take over. And then around August, just before her little buds form, I pull them each one through and I spend a good week up here cutting out all the dead wood.

And then I bring her back and tie her up, and then I can put her where I want, like a little dance, like an installation. So you have to walk around her. She rules the roost here. She does, but it’s very beautiful.

I just love the way it kind of forms a lovely canopy above you. Yeah. How often do you do flowers and do your floristry skills? Well, quite often now. The wonderful thing about growing your own is you have your own florist shop and I can make up bouquets.

Just the tiniest little flower, Mum always said, will bring you so much joy. But more so the joy of giving. So we were always… She was always giving us flowers to take to the school teachers. Or she was always giving. She’d grow her own flowers and pick them and give them away.

So she taught us how to love through gardening. Petrina continues her mother’s gift of giving by delivering flowers to those she loves, spreading the joy, particularly at Christmas time.