Episode: New Zealand Ellerslie International Flower Show

Presenter: Lynda Hallinan

There are two ways to create a crowd pleasing show garden. You can design a cool courtyard and put in some fancy furniture and big pots and stylish sculptures. Or you can just let the plants shine and hope the judges also take a shine to them.

The gold medal winning garden delivers the best of both worlds with a fascinating mix of new plants to compliment the contemporary courtyard setting.

Flowering perennials are increasingly hard to find in show gardens because there is a real art to getting them to bloom on cue and strut their stuff for the judges.

Lets face it, when you are right amongst it, a well behaved garden can just be a bit bland and boring. It is much more fun to liven things up by mixing and matching native plants like astelia with exotics like Ligularia ?Britt-Marie Crawford? (Ligularia dentata ?Britt-Marie Crawford?).

The colour and shape of the Ligularia combines perfectly with the new Euphorbia ?Tui? which inturn contrasts very well with the mounds of Acacia Limelight.

If you are not careful, variegated plants like Sedum ?Elsie?s Gold? (Sedum spectabile) can clash horribly with neighbouring plants so the trick is to tone them down by matching them up with yellow foliage plants.

If you prefer a head of bright floral colour then Milfoil ?Moonshine? (Achillea Hybrid Cultivar ?Moonshine?) with its 40cm stems and bright clumps of yellow flowers are perfect and great for picking.

The lovely little Dahlia (Dahlia Hybrid ?Knockout?) makes a great border plant with deep black foliage and bright buttery coloured flowers. There is also a pink and white candy striped version called Kapow (Dahlia Hybrid ?Kapow?).

www.bloomsofbressingham.com

Designer

Trina Tully - Trina Tully Landscape Design
09 488 6606
021 472 474
trinatully@xtra.co.nz