Chicken Coops Episode 1 Episode 2 Episode 3 Episode 4 Episode 5 Episode 6 Episode 7 Episode 8 Episode 9 Episode 10 Episode 11 Episode 12 Episode 13

Pimp my Plants: Hindu Temple Windbreak

The Shri Shiva Vishnu Temple, at Carrum Downs is Melbourne’s largest Hindu temple. The foundation stones for the temple were cut in India and blessed by chief priests of the famous temples in India and were shipped to Melbourne and laid at a special ceremony in 1988. But it wasn’t until 1994 that building work was completed and the temple officially opened.

BACKGROUND

The Shri Shiva Vishnu Temple, at Carrum Downs is Melbourne’s largest Hindu temple. The foundation stones for the temple were cut in India and blessed by chief priests of the famous temples in India and were shipped to Melbourne and laid at a special ceremony in 1988. But it wasn’t until 1994 that building work was completed and the temple officially opened.

The temple sits on almost six hectares of flat land and is constantly buffeted by prevailing winds. About 10 years ago a stand of eucalypts was planted on the edge of a car park to create a valuable windbreak. But to be really effective it needs an understorey. And so Costa is visiting the temple to help a team of volunteers from the temple and the community plant a better windbreak.

The plan is to put in about 350 smaller growing shrubs, which will reach 2metres, under the established eucalypt canopy. Together these plants will help screen the nearby highway, and also buffer the wind.

The best place to select plants that will thrive in these harsh conditions is the nearby Carrum Indigenous Nursery. Nursery Manager Alison Kuiter says the plants she grows and sells at the nursery are indigenous to the area, and grow naturally in the environment. “These have taken thousands and thousands of years to adapt to this climate, so they should survive in the soil and with the amount of rain at the temple site. These plants will also provide a food source for local birds and animals,” she says.

TIPS

•    The beauty of visiting the Carrum Indigenous Nursery is that it has a demonstration bed that illustrates how the plants will look as they grow from tube stock into mature plants. That way you can see exactly how your plant will look when it grows up.
•    When selecting plants for your garden at home, and like the planting for the windbreak, don’t choose a single species, try to mix it up and celebrate the diversity of nature. By using a range of plants you will actually build a healthier garden.
•    Try plants that grow to different heights or layers, this will create interest and a more effective windbreak.
•    Some of the hardier plants Costa selected included strappy leaf plants such as Sandhill Sword-Sedge Lepidosperma concavum and Lomandra longifolia, wattles including Acacia mearnsii some tea trees and Allocasuarina spp.
•    But for indigenous plants specific to your area, check with your council, native or indigenous nursery.
•    The plants bought were tube stock and cost $1.50 each, but prices vary depending on the nursery. The beauty of buying tube stock is that it’s a cheap and effective way to plant lots of trees and shrubs.
•    The best time for community plantings such as at the temple is when there is still moisture and warmth in the soil, so from winter through to early spring.
•    When planting remember to create a big enough hole to enable the roots to grow. You can use tools such as a Hamilton Planter, or a pottipuki to assist with digging holes. These are useful if you have lots of plants to put in the ground.
•    Stake plants for wind protection, and if necessary use a tree guard.

FURTHER INFORMATION

Carrum Indigenous Plant Nursery
Learmonth reserve, Cnr Learmonth and Thompson Rds Patterson Lakes VIC 3197
Ph: 03 97760823
Contact: Alison Kuiter
Email: contact@carrumindigenousnursery.com.au
Web: www.carrumindigenousnursery.com.au

The Shri Shiva Vishnu Temple
www.hsvshivavishnutemple.org.au

Sustainable Gardening Australia has some good information about using indigenous plants: www.sgaonline.rog.au/info_indigenousgardens.html

The Australian Native Plant Society is a great source of information: asgap.org.au

Costa in the Community: Edible Landscapes

Heronswood is a two hectare showcase garden that’s a feast for the senses. Located on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula, about 50km south of Melbourne, it’s home to Digger’s Seeds and a fantastic place to explore the concept of edible landscapes.

BACKGROUND

Heronswood is a two hectare showcase garden that’s a feast for the senses. Located on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula, about 50km south of Melbourne, it’s home to Digger’s Seeds and a fantastic place to explore the concept of edible landscapes.

An edible landscape is simply about creating an ornamental and beautiful garden from fruit and vegetable plants - so they not only look good, but are tasty and useful in your cooking too.

Digger’s Club Plant Manager Tim Sansom believes that vegetables can provide a fabulous celebration of colours in the garden. For example plants such as red and yellow chard with their interesting colours and textures can be planted together to create a really strong ornamental feature.

Edible landscapes can look like living artworks, but importantly putting a selection of different plants together can also promote plant diversity in the garden. According to Tim, the idea of planting a combination of different plants with a range of colours and textures confuses pests. “Cabbage moths love to find a row in a lovely straight line and they just go and munch away along. If you’ve got the cabbages mixed up in the vegie bed the pests tend to be confused,” he says.

TIPS

Traditionally vegie patches are messy and untidy looking and are often stuck up the back of the yard. But with some imagination you too can create an edible landscape that’s a feature at the front of your house.

Remember there are no rules to creating edible landscapes, so essentially you can do whatever you like, but some examples that work well in the garden at Heronswood include:

•    Using rhubarb as a feature plant, or understorey in a garden.
•    For borders try using thyme Thymus vulgaris - it has wonderful purple flowers, smells good and the leaves are great for cooking.
•    Nasturtium Tropaeolum majus is also used as a useful border plant. The leaves have a peppery taste and even the flowers can be sprinkled over a salad.
•    To create a landscape feature such as a hedge try avocado ‘Wurtz’ a smaller growing or dwarfing form of avocado. Just keep it trimmed to about 3metres to create a lush, informal hedge. And prune it after flowering, when the new season’s wood has hardened.
•    Another great hedging plant is rosemary ‘Tuscan Blue’. At Heronswood it’s been cut on an angle to create a triangular shape, but try experimenting to create different features in your own garden.
•    Another planting combination that works well is a border of golden marjoram Origanum vulgare ‘Aureum’ which contrasts beautifully with the grey foliage of the curry plant Helichrysum italicum. These tough plants would be perfect along the entry to your house, or a driveway.

CREATING YOUR OWN EDIBLE LANDSCAPE

Sometimes it’s difficult to know just where to start. Costa created some edible plant combinations for different climatic conditions, and these might give you some inspiration to give it a try at home.

•    Select plants that suit your climate
•    In these designs Costa created three distinct layers – a canopy, a mid-range level and lower ground level plantings. This not only helps promote plant diversity, but also adds interest to the garden.
•    And have fun with the design, try placing them in the garden in pots first, and move them around to see how they look at different levels and in different places.

For a hot, dry Mediterranean style climate:

•    Try pomegranate Punica granatum for height and as a feature at the rear of the bed. It will provide beautiful fruit.
•    To add great architectural interest in the garden at a mid-range level and an all time favourite that will do well in the hot and dry is the globe artichoke Cynara scolymus. Lemon verbena Aloysia triphylla is another hardy plant. Its pungent leaves make great tea, just pick a couple and steep them in hot water.
•    Salvias or sage Salvia officinalis ‘Berggarten’make a great lower or ground cover, and if you plant them close to a path, as you brush past, the aromatic leaves will smell great.

Temperate zone – areas along the coast that don’t get severe frosts or cold weather:

•    For a tall feature plant we’ve used blood orange, but you could substitute that for just about any citrus. Try lemons, cumquats, or grapefruit. Citrus are an all time favourite, and no home garden should be without one.
•    For the middle storey the gooseberry Ribes grossularia will grow to about a metre, and also produce beautiful and interesting looking fruit. And you could also try Feijoa Feijoa sellowiana, another hardy alternative.
•    At ground level baby sun rose Aptenia cordifolia has a succulent leaf that is great in salad and even the red flowers are edible.

FURTHER INFORMATION
www.diggers.com.au/

Digger’s Seeds Mail Orders
Phone: 03 5984 7900
(Mon to Fri 9-5)
Email: info@diggers.com.au
Post: PO Box 300, Dromana VIC 3936
Fax: 03 5987 2398

Heronswood Garden - Shop - Cafe
OPEN 7 DAYS A WEEK (Closed 24-26 Dec)
105 Latrobe Parade, Dromana, 3936
Ph. Shop: 03 5984 7321
(sorry no mail order enquiries to this number)
Ph Dining: 03 5984 7318
Fax 03 5987 2398

Entry to garden $10.00

Costa in the Community: Dromana Spring Festival

Heronswood estate in Dromana on Victoria’s Morning Peninsula is home to the Digger’s Seed Club the largest gardening club in Australia. And each year the estate holds a spring festival to showcase the beautiful gardens and the plants in it.

Established in 1978, the prime objective of Digger’s seeds is to preserve the integrity of heritage and heirloom varieties of vegetables and plants. A heritage or heirloom plant is one that’s open-pollinated (pollinated by bees) and this means it will grow true to type (the same as its parent) from seed.

Heirloom seed have been handed down through generations, and have been carefully selected for the home gardener because the fruit or vegetables mature over a longer period, taste better and cook well.

Digger’s founder, Clive Blazey said: “We wanted to rescue and preserve old fashioned varieties of vegetables such as Scarlet Runner beans, which other companies were discarding, and thought the best way to do this was through mail order distribution.”

Costa visited the Heronswood gardens to see some excellent examples of how edible plants can be integrated into all areas of the garden, including in ornamental perennial borders and as hedges.

The grounds also showcase plants for dry climate and cottage gardens and have magnificent vegetable gardens. In fact the Fork to Fork café menu uses seasonal fruit and vegetables from the garden.

FURTHER INFORMATION

Digger’s Seeds Mail Orders
Phone: 03 5984 7900
(Mon to Fri 9-5)
Email: info@diggers.com.au
Post: PO Box 300, Dromana VIC 3936
Fax: 03 5987 2398

Heronswood Garden - Shop - Cafe
OPEN 7 DAYS A WEEK (Closed 24-26 Dec)
105 Latrobe Parade, Dromana, 3936
Ph. Shop: 03 5984 7321
(sorry no mail order enquiries to this number)
Ph Dining: 03 5984 7318
Fax 03 5987 2398

Entry to garden $10.00

www.diggers.com.au

Backyard Revolution: Meeting The Family

In this series Costa is going to undertake an important project - showing step by step just how to transform a typical backyard in the suburbs into a productive, abundant and sustainable have

BACKGROUND

Costa believes that everyone can make a difference to our environment. Often it’s a case of just knowing where to start, and of course the best place to begin is in our own backyards.

In this series Costa is going to undertake an important project - showing step by step just how to transform a typical backyard in the suburbs into a productive, abundant and sustainable haven.

THE FAMILY

The Tembeleski family has been chosen from hundreds of applicants to have Costa design and build them a family garden.

Angela Tembeleski is Greek, and her husband Cane, whose parents are originally from Yugoslavia, met while working together on a super yacht in Greece. Cane was smitten from the first glance and they have been together ever since. The couple has four boys under 10, Raffael 10, Christopher 9, Johnathan 5, Dimitrios 4 and a little girl, Elena 8 months.
When redesigning a garden the first place to start is to find out exactly what the owners want. And so this is the Tembeleski’s initial wish list:

•    A productive garden. All members of the family agree they want to be more self-sufficient because it’s expensive buying from the fruit market. The couple wants to grow their own produce, particularly vegies from which Angela can create traditional Greek dishes.
•    Some help with recycling and composting
•    A play area

It will take the next 13 weeks to create the design that will give the Tembeleski family a new, useful and sustainable backyard. And along the way we are going to get to know the whole family (grandma’s grandpa’s and the extended family) and see how Costa’s take on the garden, the environment and on life starts to mix with the Tembeleski view of the world.