Vinca minor 'Gertrude Jekyll' (Minor Periwinkle) 🏡 DIY Designs
A lovely little plant with many uses! 'Vinca' makes a tough, very low-growing ground cover, and it'll grow in sun 🌞 or shade 😎. When grown in shady conditions Vinca minor will attain a taller form than the very flat habit seen when grown in full sun conditions. In shade expect a mature height of no more 150mm, in full sun it may stay as low and compact as 50mm.Vinca minor spreads by putting down roots as it goes, which makes it more robust and better suited to pet and child-friendly g...
February 25, 2024Salvia leucanthe - Mexican Bush Sage 🏡 DIY Designs
Mexican Bush Sage - Possibly my favorite flowering purple plant ❤️Salvia leucanthe is a reliable option for a blaze of colour almost year-round.Look for it at the garden centre if you have a sunny space to fill in your summer garden. Grows to a good 900mm x900mm but it's easily cut back each spring to keep the size contained.TIP: Wait till the first new season's fresh green stems appear, then cut it right back.If garden plants have you confused or you just want to learn, FOLLOW ME ...
February 25, 2024Muehlenbeckia axillaris - Pohuehue,creeping wire vine 🏡 DIY Designs
Pohuehue or creeping wire vine.Easier to remember than this lovely plant's botanical name of Muehlenbeckia axillaris 🤐.One of our smaller NZ native plants, it's best in full sun 🌞 where it'll scramble and spread a good distance while still remaining low - at around 300mm max.Can also provide a slight spillover effect at wall edges and in pots 🪴FOLLOW ME to learn more about plants and garden design....
February 25, 2024Liriope 'Royal Purple - Lily Turf 🏡 DIY Designs
🌿An ideal plant for the narrowest of garden strips. Liriope 'Royal Purple' is one of the smaller 'Lily Turf' and forms a little grassy clump about 350mm high x 350mm wide.Perfect for lining a path, driveway or garden edge where you'd space them roughly 300mm centre to centre so that they grow together to form a continuous row 🌾🌾🌾. If you're using it as a massed groundcover, around 6 per m2 will get you a good fast coverHappy in sun or shade, and adaptable to most soil types including...
February 25, 2024Dichroa 'Blue Sapphire' - EVERGREEN HYDRANGEA 🏡 DIY Designs
🍃EVERGREEN HYDRANGEA , well, technically, it's NOT a hydrangea... but that is the common name for this large, floriferous shrub.Botanical name is Dichroa 'Blue Sapphire'.It can be hard to track down.It's well worth the hunt 👀if you are landscaping or planting out a garden, and you want a large, hydrangea-like shrub without the dormant season. That foliage 👌.😍A favourite pairing /plant combination of mine is 'Blue Sapphire' with red flax. Dichroa also makes a wonderful standalone plan...
February 25, 2024Pratia angulata, Lobelia angulata or Panakenake 🏡 DIY Designs
🌿One of the best walkable plants you can use between pavers.This is Pratia angulata, also known as Lobelia angulata or ‘Panakenake’, a NZ native plant that thrives in a damp spot.It grows less vigorously (but still well) in drier situations. Full sun to semi-shaded situations.💫Here’s a couple of my best tips to help you get great results if you want to create this look at home:TIP 1: 👣Space your pavers (with an even spacing) of between 650mm-750mm from the centre of one paver to t...
February 25, 2024Libertia grandiflora - NZ iris 🏡 DIY Designs
💫A plant that appears in many of my designs because it has a nice structural form, a tidy low-maintenance habit, and pretty little flowers to boot.🖐Meet Libertia grandiflora, a lovely NZ native plant more commonly known as 'NZ iris'.Personally, I prefer it grown in part shade, as the foliage tends towards orange when grown in full sun.A great choice for below trees, in pots and strikes just the right contrast against those leafy little pittosporum balls we're all in love with currently ...
February 25, 2024Ligularia reniformis 'Giganteum' (tractorseat plant) 🏡 DIY Designs
💚The perfect choice for beginner gardeners, 'tractor seat plant' goes with pretty much everything and makes a fantastic contrast against any number of companion plants.The large evergreen leaves that give Ligularia reniformis 'Giganteum ' its common name of 'tractor seat' are big dramatic & and light-reflecting, AND it's not fussy about growing conditions.For example, it's a great plant choice for those tricky, shady areas such as under trees 🌳. It is a bog plant 💦, so it'll t...
February 25, 2024Phormium cookianum 'Emerald Gem' (dwarf mountain flax) 🏡 DIY Designs
🌾A good-sized green flax, perfect for attracting birds 🐦 to your garden.If you're a fan of Wharariki, commonly called 'mountain flax', you'll love this dwarf sized cultivar - 'Emerald Gem' which takes up only half as much space as its rather large parent. Same good looks 😁 and yellow flowers , just smaller overall, maturing at around 1m x 1m.If you want to lern more about garden plants FOLLOW ME on Instagram to learn more about planting and garden design....
February 25, 2024Cretan brake fern - Pteris cretica 🏡 DIY Designs
THAT DRY SHADE PLANT YOU'VE BEEN LOOKING FOR ....I've grown A LOT of plants in my time and you'd be hard pushed to find one that's as tough and as beautiful as 'Cretan brake fern', botanical name Pteris cretica (pronounced 'teris' as that's a silent 'P').Perfect for those dry shady areas where nothing except clivia will grow. In fact its a great companion plant 🪴 to clivia.It'll grow in sunny spots, but then so will lots of plants, so save it to fill those difficult areas like the narro...
February 25, 2024Dicondra Repens (Mercury Bay weed) 🏡 DIY Designs
🌱A really useful little low-growing 'walkable' plant that's perfect for planting between your pavers (this is the plant you’ll often see in those inspirational garden photos everyone posts on Instagram 💚). Mass planted over bigger areas, 'Mercury Bay weed' will give a lawn-like effect.Though its common name suggests otherwise, Dicondra repens isn't a weed, it's just a tough little plant that grows where other plants don't want to 👉 like in dry, exposed, sunny sites, dry and sandy soil...
February 25, 2024Parthenocissus tricuspidata (Boston Ivy) 🏡 DIY Designs
😃 Is THIS the new Auckland go-to for covering walls and fences on just a tiny footprint, now that self-clinging climber Ficus pumila is a no-no 🥲.Its botanical name Parthenocissus tricuspidata is a bit of a tongue-twister, so most of us just call it ‘Boston Ivy. And, it's another one of those super useful, self-clinging, climbing plants, I.e. it climbs by clinging, so no wires or support trellis are needed.It won’t damage your wall the way an English ivy will, however, try to remo...
February 25, 2024Picking Gardens : Tips to Include Flowers For Picking in Your Garden Design
Picking gardens are popular with my clients because there is a great joy to be had in gathering flowers from your own garden, either to put into a vase or to give as an impromptu gift. When my three daughters were young they were forever raiding my garden for small posies to give to their teachers or friend. 'Tussie mussies' were the name we gave them, a hangover from my floristry days when we used to bundle up all our offcuts into colourful little mixed bunches tied off with ribbon. In the gar...
February 5, 2024Family Garden Design Ideas
Family gardens are hard-working gardens, especially those that also have to accommodate the needs of small children.Many outdoor toys and play structures not only take up a lot of space, but they’re also a nightmare for the eye. The good news is that there are a lot of fun children’s play elements that aren’t bright or garish and that you can work into even the smallest of family gardens in a subtle way that won’t ruin your garden design aesthetic. In this blog we share 8 FUN GARDE...
December 26, 2023Drought Tolerant Gardens – Are You Watering Wisely?
Drought-tolerant gardens have been a popular choice in recent years and with experts now predicting the warming El Niño climate pattern to last until at least April next year, it seemed a good time to refresh this blog on how you can reduce water usage in garden. Heading for the succulent section of your local garden centre and planting Xerophytic desert plants might seem like the answer to a hot dry summer, but these don’t suit all climates or garden aesthetics, and with ...
November 13, 2023Best Landscape Design Features For Property Resale
If you are prepping your property for sale, and want to make it more appealing to potential buyers, then don’t neglect the garden!Because a well-designed garden can increase the value of your home by as much as 10% to 12%. That's a significant increase that can translate to thousands of dollars!Money aside, gardens also evolve emotion, and not only is your garden the first thing potential buyers see when they arrive at your property, it’s also visible from almost every window they look ...
October 25, 2023Planting Design - 5 Tricks Landscape Professionals Use
A good planting design or interesting planting scheme is what brings a garden to life!Read any plant-focused garden design blog (except this one) and it’ll bang on how if you want your garden planting to do well, it's vital that you choose the right plant for the conditions and space, and the importance of selecting appropriate species for your site conditions. That’s excellent advice, but well covered already.Let’s assume you’ve done your research in that space, dig a little deeper, and...
October 5, 2023Landscape Designer’s 6 Best Hedge Plants
From a landscape designer's perspective, the best hedge plants for NZ gardens are those that will meet the needs of the client and best serve the purpose for which they are being planted, be that adding structure to the landscape, providing fast and effective screening of an ugly eyesore or creating privacy for your overlooked garden. This means the most appropriate hedge plant options will vary from project to project, making it almost impossible to choose just 6 of the best. We'll ta...
September 30, 2023Coastal Auckland Landscape Design
During my Auckland landscape design career, many garden design projects I have worked on have had stunning coastal backdrops. With these gorgeous views, comes the challenge of putting together a landscape of plants aka a ‘plant palette’ that can cope with the salt-laden winds of the exposed Auckland coastline.Agapanthus aside, there are plenty of plants that are hardy to salty breezes and that will thrive in the humid Auckland climate. This blog focuses on the larger plants (trees, shrubs an...
September 30, 2023Plants for a New Zealand Coastal Garden
Auckland landscape design forms a large body of the design work we do here at DIY Designs, so our projects often involve the creation of tough planting schemes that will survive the challenges of a coastal setting.Our previous blog on coastal gardens focussed on suggestions for landscape trees, shrubs and hedges to use in a coastal landscape design, in the temperate Auckland region. In this follow-up blog, the focus is on lower-growing plants, such as small shrubs and groundcovers.COASTAL C...
September 30, 2023Blossom Trees for Small Front Garden Designs
Front gardens bring out the design voyeur in me! While out walking it’s hard not to snoop at what other Auckland homeowners are doing to smarten up their entrance spaces, as these small front garden spaces can be a landscaping challenge.What I’m loving currently is that with winter finally receding, and spring upon us, Auckland is bursting into full bloom, or should I say, blossom!...
September 10, 2023Garden Design Ideas | 3 Tips To Get Started
Garden designers love garden porn as much as anyone and we know that many enjoyable hours can be spent drooling over gardens in Pinterest and Instagram. These are great tools for getting design inspiration and for keeping up with current garden trends, however, there comes a point when all those beautiful and clever garden & landscape design ideas can just start to get confusing and overwhelming. How are all those ideas going to fit together in a manner that look effortless a...
August 24, 2023Low Maintenance Garden Plants
Cyclical garden trends make fashion victims of some great low maintenance garden plants. It’s hard to keep a good plant down though, especially one that needs minimal water, is adaptable to a range of soil and light conditions and that is resistant to pests and diseases . Perhaps that is why eventually they come back into favour. Of course, being attractive helps too....
August 21, 2023Why Fake Grass?
Fake grass promises a lot of positive outcomes and one of the main reasons people consider it is because it offers a chemical-free, low-maintenance alternative to a real lawn. Or does it? I created a garden design for a client's holiday home recently and they shared with me their experience about having used artificial turf at their main residence in Christchurch, NZ. Here's what they said..."Weeds, weeds, weeds - sold to us on the basis that we would have the "odd weed" but moss and ...
August 4, 2023Landscape Designer’s 10 Best Low Maintenance Groundcover Plants
From a landscape designer's perspective, the best groundcover plants are those that will quickly cover areas of bare soil, and therefore help suppress the establishment of undesirable weed species. In this blog, we cover how you can use groundcover plants to reduce your garden maintenance and provide a list of 10 of the best groundcover plants suitable for most New Zealand growing conditions, including a few NZ native plant species....
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