Watch more gardening advice here: https://youtu.be/opLY4sj6Bok
Join us as we explore the essential spring gardening advice for turning your yard into a paradise. We show you exactly how to take dry, sandy soil and transform it into a rich, living foundation that will support healthy plant growth all year round. Learn the best techniques for feeding your lawn using organic nutrition that locks in moisture, and see why choosing the right mulch can save your vegetables from the summer heat and reduce your weeding time. Plus, we travel to the stunning Araluen Botanical Park to witness an incredible display of 120,000 tulips and get expert advice on how to care for them at home. We also look at the beautiful world of low-maintenance citrus trees and the critical need to conserve our underground bore water resources. Get ready for in-depth gardening tips, gorgeous garden design, and inspiration to create your own beautiful, water-wise garden.
00:00 | How to Grow a Lush, Healthy Lawn
02:56 | Growing Stunning Tree Peonies
03:29 | Best Mulch for Garden & Vegetable Soil Health
05:34 | Bore Water Usage
08:10 | Transforming Hopeless Sandy Soil into Rich Garden Beds
11:22 | Tips for Growing Delicious Citrus Trees
12:42 | Creative Ideas for Lightweight Planters & Succulents
14:10 | Araluen Botanical Park Tulips & Bulb Care Tips
Click here for more gardening content: https://www.youtube.com/@GardenersGuideChannel
From: The Garden Gurus | Series 01 Episode 28
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#Gardening #SpringGarden #GardeningTips
A dick dick dick dick digging around. I got my spade. I got my hoe. I got my rake and I’m ready to go. Hello and welcome to Spring in WA with the garden gurus. I’m Trevor Cochran and we’ve got another sensational program packed full of spring garden inspiration. And isn’t this just stunning, beautiful Araluan. Here’s what’s coming up on today’s show. Hi, I’m Steve Wood and I’m going to show you some great ideas on using lightweight planters. Today I’m going to show you how to turn your hopeless sand into rich, healthy soil. Good day, I’m Chris and today I’m going to give you lots of ideas on how you can save one of the world’s most precious resources in your home, water. [Music] Growing a lush, healthy lawn here in WA isn’t as hard as you might think. We have a beautiful climate and although the soils are a bit average, with the help of some compost and a quality turf fertilizer, you can have a lawn that’s looking lush and healthy in no time. What we’re realizing these days is that the health of a lawn is driven by the organic material that it has to draw from. Organic based nutrition stimulates all that wonderful microbial activity that helps feed our lawns while holding on to the valuable moisture and nutrients. Quality lawn fertilizers contain products such as blood and bone, which is a slowrelease type of feeding. Together with zeelites and humates, the nutrition stays down in the root zone where it belongs, releasing gradually back to the lawn as the nutrition is required. This West Australian product combines all these ingredients into homogeneous prills, which ensures that when we spread the fertilizer, the various elements are distributed evenly. This is also an ideal product to use as a pre-plant underlay when establishing a new lawn. Energy turf is ideal for all turf varieties and is great for getting new lawns off to a sensational start. [Music] Now that we’ve fertilized, it’s important to identify any patchy pieces of lawn. Giving them a treat with Lawn Revor is the ideal way to get the soil healthy and have the lawn back looking lush in no time. [Music] Bailey’s Lawn Revor and organic top dress is predominantly composted chicken manure combined with grow wetting agent that encourages good water penetration and soil rewetability which is a welcome blessing during those hot summer months. Designed to Australian standards and water wise approved, it’s hard to go past these quality West Australian products. Proudly manufactured by the Bailey’s family and designed for our West Australian soils. Every once in a while, I’m reminded just how lucky we are to live here in Western Australia. This part of the world is sensational, but particularly because you can grow all sorts of plants, tropicals, but also some cool climate plants. And this one here is a classic example. It’s the tree peony and it is just beautiful. They grow really well in the hills. If you can give them a consistent moisture supply, come springtime, you end up with these amazing flowers. Now, there’s more brilliant garden inspiration coming up straight after this break. When I think about mulching, I can’t help but compare it to the insulation that we use in the roofs of our homes. Protecting our soil and vegetables from the hot summer sun is essential, but it’s important that we choose the right type of mulch. Coarse soap open mulch is the best and should be applied around 75 mil thick. This will allow water to pass through and penetrate deep into the soil while at the same time dramatically reducing evaporation. The other bonus is that weed growth is significantly suppressed. And the less weeding I have to do, the better. Mulching significantly reduces the water stress caused by our hot summer sun, especially on our vegetables, making our salad greens like lettuce, mazuna, and spinach less bitter and a whole lot tastier. Quality local products are now available that are grown and produced here in WA to the highest standards. Dco Triple C mulch goes through a pasteurization process, ensuring that it’s weed-free. It’s naturally packed with healthy microisal fungi that helps build the life in the soil, making nutrients more easily available to the plants. Triple C stands for corn, chicken, and canola. A 100 L bag will cover around 4 to 5 square meters of garden area. Over time, the mulch will break down, making it the perfect way to naturally feed your garden. This product is great at retaining moisture in the soil, and applying now will protect it throughout the summer. Triple C is available from your local nurseries or master hardware stores. When you order 10 or more bales, you’ll receive free home delivery. It’s great to see a product like this supporting our West Australian farmers. If you’re finding you’ve got a patchy lawn in a shady part of the lawn area, it’s not going to improve with the normal grass varieties. It’s probably going to deteriorate. So, what you need to do is overso with a perennial rye grass. It makes such a difference and they do really well in shady spots. Now, it’s hard to imagine, but I’m actually walking on one of the world’s great water tanks. It’s a vast underground store of water that has sustained and even propelled Perth’s exceptional growth over the last 150 years. Now in the trade, these are known as aquifers and they deliver us that wonderful resource that we know as bore water. Now this seems to have been one of the few benefits of our vast deep sandy soils and the rainfall goes deep into that soil that underground reserve and that’s what we draw from for the average garden board to a depth of 50 to 100 m. But as our rainfall has plummeted over the last 30 years and stream flows have begun to dwindle, it’s not only our dams, but our aquifers are really struggling. So far from being this infinite water resource that’s literally on tap to plunder, we need to see bore water increasingly as a precious and scarce resource. If you have a bore like me, then you’re pretty lucky and you can use that bore as a great way to water the garden without needing to use our increasingly scarce and precious mains or scheme water supplies. But I really want to stress that this is not a get out of jail free card giving you the chance to water at will. You still need to follow the law and the rosters for watering apply equally to scheme and bore water users. So my bore gives me one extra day’s watering a week. Just one. Now, you may well have seen something like this in your local park or reserve. This is a giant bore pump delivering water to keep this wonderful park green. Now, you may have seen sprinklers on in the middle of the day or even when it’s raining. But before you pick up the phone to do in a water waster, it just pays to check what’s going on. Most councils are really aware of how precious ball water is, and they’ve made great strides with the water corporation and as a water wise council to reign in that water use. So most of the time your council is probably doing irrigation testing. So that means they’re checking to make sure the system is working efficiently and to ensure that the ball pump just hasn’t seized over the winter break. This is a great thing to do for you to maintain your own garden bore and to make sure it’s working efficiently, but it’s important to only run maintenance testing on your allocated watering days and to a maximum of 2 minutes per station. So there’s no doubt that bore water has been a huge bo for Perth gardeners, but we need to remember it’s not an infinite resource. It’s precious and it needs to be managed carefully so that our future generations of WA gardeners get the same opportunity to draw from one of the world’s truly amazing water resources. When constructing a new house, builders go to great lengths to ensure the house is built on a really strong foundation. And this is something we as gardeners should really take note of because when we’re creating a new garden, building a great foundation for it will ensure the long-term health and vitality of our precious plants. Here in WA, we are typically faced with dry, sandy soil, which has very little capacity to hold on to either nutrients or moisture and provides an inhospitable environment for crucial soil life such as earthworms, microbes, and beneficial fungi. Thankfully, transforming hideous sands into rich and healthy soils is not overly difficult. Adding materials and products such as clays, compost, soil improvers, as well as animal manurses and worm castings, and then incorporating them deeply into the existing soil can make a world of difference. The soil amendments should be applied to the garden bed at the recommended rates and then dug or hoed into the soil. Always try to combine them thoroughly with the existing soil to a depth of around 300 mm deep. The clays and compost will greatly improve your soil’s ability to hold on to water and nutrients, and your soil will soon be alive with a whole host of beneficial soil fauna. [Music] If your existing soil is dry to the point of water repellency, a wetting agent will help with moisture penetration, which will in turn make it easier to combine the soil amendments with your existing soil. Now, obviously, it’s easier to improve your soil prior to planting. But this doesn’t mean that you can’t improve existing garden beds. The secret is to add small amounts of the soil amendments more regularly and then gently ho into the ground. Now, don’t forget about the lawn. The soil below can be boosted by applying quality soil amendments, particularly mature compost to the surface and rubbing it in with a rake. If this is done several times a year, the lawn will soon get to enjoy all the benefits of a greatly improved soil. Well, that’s the lawn taken care of. So, now it’s time to get some plants into this greatly improved soil. This shouldn’t take too long. Plants grown in healthy soil will grow strong and vigorously in a completely sustainable way. They will be more disease resistant, will require less fertilizer to sustain their growth, and will be far more drought tolerant. Great soil amendments build great garden foundations. Look for the water wise and the smart approved watermark symbols. They’re your guarantee that they’ve been designed for WA conditions. Build a healthy soil and you will build a healthy garden. Here’s a tip for new players in the gardening game. Now, if you’ve got beautiful plants like these chameleas that are in flour and then the flowers finish and fall on the ground, don’t rake them up. Put them in a plastic bag and send them off. What you want to do, you want to leave them laying on the ground. They’re a beautiful natural mulch. And this plant has put a huge amount of energy that it took out of the soil and from the sun into producing them. What you want is that to go back into the ground and replenish the plant. After the break, more brilliant gardening advice right here on the Garden Gurus. As our gardens get smaller, it’s vital that we’re more strategic about the type of trees we choose. But there’s a range of trees out there that we just can’t be without. I’m talking about my favorite plants of all time, the beautiful citrus. Living in WA, we’re blessed with one of the best citrus growing climates in the world. Fragrant blossom followed by clusters of sweet, delicious fruit on lowmaintenance plants. What’s not to love about these Mediterranean delicacies? We’re here at Walex Melville where there’s a fantastic range of advanced citrus and lots of friendly advice. Oranges, mandarins, kumquats. Talk about adding value to your home and your health. Grow them in containers, espalia them against a wall or simply plant them in whatever pocket of soil you can find. Citrus love their food. By fertilizing them once every 3 months, you’ll keep them looking lush, healthy, and full of fruit. Be brave. Choose a couple of unusual varieties. These kumquats, they taste delicious, and they make fantastic preserves. I promise you won’t be disappointed, and you’ll have the thrill of being able to say, “I grew it myself.” When it comes to choosing pots for plants, the range is endless. You have your traditional terra cotta, kilfired, glazed, and though beautiful, they can be pretty heavy. What a great invention these lightweight fiberglass planters are. Not only do they look good, but they’re easy to handle, so less chance of hurting yourself. They come in a great variety of colors and sizes and will look fantastic on the deck or patio. Just like your traditional planters, you can plant anything in them. From potted color to fragrant lavender, everything will thrive. These fiberglass planters also make wonderful water gardens. Simply choose not to pre-drill drainage holes and choose your favorite water plants. Fill with water. Include some stones and a couple of fish. Seriously, classy gardening does not get any easier than this. Another alternative is to create a trendy succulent garden. In this case, we pre-drill for drainage, half fill with soil, and start planting. Even if you forgot to water this for a week or two over summer, it’ still look great. Wex Melville have got an extensive range of these greatl looking pots to suit all your planting needs. and loading them into the car. Well, that won’t be a problem at all. If you’re born in Western Australia, the tulip would have to be probably the most exotic plant you’ll ever come across. Now, this beautiful bulb that originates from Europe, not necessarily Holland, but actually Turkey is just stunning in the springtime. It heralds the arrival of spring. And if you want to experience them for yourself in person, you want to join the masses down here at the Arrowan Botanical Park. It’s 45 minutes east of Perth in Rolly Stone and this time of the year is truly spectacular. Every winter the very capable but small team of gardeners here will their numbers swell as a huge team of volunteers join them to plant 120,000 new chillet bulbs into the beautiful rich lom that makes this space so special. Now, the hard work is done in mid-inter, and spring is the time to stand back and soak up the spectacular display that these incredible bulbs produce. One thing you may not have known is that tulips have to be one of the ultimate in water-wise plants in our environment. And the reason is they grow with the winter rains and they go dormant during the summer. So, they don’t need any supplementary watering during the summer months. Now, whilst I enjoy the beautiful chillup display here at Arrowan, why don’t you check out what’s coming up tonight on 9 New Year’s. The park was created back in 1929 and designed as a retreat for youth to come and learn life skills in the most stunning environment. The gardens and native park land cover some 59 hectares. And its care was taken over by the Arrowan Park Foundation in 1990. And this group of passionate people have removed many of the invasive species and continue to do so trying to ensure that the gardens remain pristine and the broader environment free of weeds. The chameleas here are considered by some the finest examples of chameleas in the world and this demonstrates just how amazing the environment here is. The gardens have lots of highlights throughout the growing season, including the roodendrrons and an amazing arburetum of stunning trees, including the many mature examples that are commonly sold in garden centers. And if you want to see how big a tree gets or how much room it needs in a home garden, a visit to the gardens here before you make your purchase could save you headaches later on. The gardens here at Aroluin are quite literally full of millions of bulbs, but it’s the tulips in springtime that you just have to check out. They’re quite literally amazing. And there’s all different types as well. You’ve got the classic wine glass forms, which is sensational when they’re cut and popped into a vase. You can bring them into the house and they look amazing. The parrot forms with their feathery petals are quite unusual. And the fringed forms are extremely different and they do exceptionally well when grown in pots. Now Grant Nixon here is in charge of the team at the botanical garden. Mate, this place is just fantastic. Is this one of the best years you’ve had? It’s been a great year. Um we last year everything sort of compacted itself. So by this time of the year we’re starting to see the end of it, but you can see everything’s still looking so brilliant in the garden. Um it’s going to continue on and and that’s definitely the weather has helped us this year. Now October is another great month. What’s coming up? What can people expect to look out for? Irises. We’ve planted another um few hundred irises this year. And of course the roses, you know, that first flush of the roses in in late October is is worth coming for. It really is. The other thing I was going to ask you, and there’d be a lot of people in this situation at home, they’ve grown tulips for the first time. What do they do now? And how do you get the best results out of tulips? These are just truly amazing. You guys must have some secrets. I think if you’re going to um keep your tulips, and we don’t. We replace them fresh every year. Um, but if you want to keep them from the time that they start to look as though they’re falling apart, y cut the flowerheads off, put in something that’s going to fertilize them and grow them as long as you can. So, put them in a cool spot and just keep them growing because the longer you can grow them, the fatter the bulb is, the better the flower for next year. Well, there you go. If you haven’t visited Araloom before or you haven’t checked it out in the last few years, you’ve got to get up here. The place is magnificent. And if you’re not here for the chillups, it doesn’t matter. the parks, the gardens, the beautiful trees, the winding stream. It is just a remarkable place, a great place for a picnic, and one of Western Australia’s really special spots. Check it out. Well, that’s all we’ve got for you this week. I hope you enjoyed the show. How beautiful is this stand of tree ferns up here at Araluan? One of the most beautiful gardens you’ll find anywhere in Australia, and we’re lucky enough to have it just 45 minutes out of Perth. Now, we’re back next week with another episode of Spring in WA with the Garden Gurus. I can’t wait to share some terrific garden advice and inspiration. Then, I’m Trevor Cochran. We’ll see you next week. [Music] [Music]
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