Larry Smith and the Riverside Gardens team talk all things pots, plants and pruning in their weekly gardening column.
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Winter!
We are just three weeks in and already I am over it.
I am not a fan of the cold.
Give me a sunny 36-degree day anytime, or at least a frosty morning with a clear sunny day.
These cold, cloudy, grey days are just not my thing.
Given all that, winter is not a bad time to be in the garden.
The ground is moist and easy to dig, and there are plenty of interesting things to be done.
Winter pruning, planting winter feature plants to add another season to the garden, repairing lawns, digging over gardens ready for spring, planting up planters, urns and hanging baskets.
Installing or repairing irrigation systems or generally cleaning up around the garden.
The other option is to set about planning your garden or a garden feature that you wish to tackle on a nicer day later on.
Even calling into the garden centre to see what is available and running your ideas past the staff to see if they have any suggestions on how best to achieve what you are envisaging.
It is what we do every day, so why not take advantage of the years of knowledge available?
This last option of being inside planning is what I chose to do last week as I busied about putting our submission together for the Nursery and Garden Industry of Victoria’s Horticultural Retailer of the Year Awards 2025.
This is the first time we have entered the awards since we won three years in a row some time back.
The main reason we have entered this is because it is a great way to stop and have a critical look at what we are doing and put plans in place to keep moving forward.
Doing the same in your garden will really pay great dividends and help you avoid the many common mistakes made when gardens are built in a hurry and on the fly.
Just because the fence line runs in straight lines around the perimeter of the block, it doesn’t mean that the gardens must follow suit.
Even formal gardens can have free-flowing lines that soften the overall appearance and create a sense of going somewhere, a sense of movement.
It can also create intrigue, as the whole garden is not visible all at once.
Is there something around the corner that the viewer is missing out on?
Unless there are physical restrictions in place, garden beds need to be wider than one metre.
It is probably the most common problem we deal with when helping choose a plant palette for customers.
Taller shrubs are going to be more than one metre wide, and if you are wanting a layered effect in your planting, the next row is going to be at least 750mm wide.
And we still have not allowed for the very front row.
Building depth into your garden allows for a far greater option in your plant selection.
It also makes for substantially less maintenance.
Lawns require mowing once a week, whereas gardens need a quick tidy up about once a month or so.
Drainage and soil levels are another regular pitfall, particularly if you are building up gardens.
Be sure you are not creating barriers that are going to impede the drainage of your site or your neighbours’.
This can lead to more than just problems for your garden, such as damage to pathways and buildings as well.
Plan to put work into the soil before you start building your garden.
Add ample gypsum to clay soils and incorporate organic matter into garden bed areas.
In most new estates, the soil has little to no micro-organisms left living in it.
The soil has been scraped bare, packed down with machinery, baked dry, and often covered in subsoil.
It can take quite a while to bring these soils back to life, so the sooner you start to treat the area with products such as Neutrog Popul8 or GOGO Juice and adding compost, the better.
If you are bringing new soil on to the site, then that can open a whole new can of worms.
So, do your homework on that one or call in and have a chat about your options.
Don’t be afraid to add larger growing trees to your design.
The right tree in the right position will offer protection to the house and garden, creating a microclimate for both you and the surrounding plants to enjoy.
Look at older established suburbs — rooftops are no longer the predominant feature in aerial views.
Canopy trees make these areas so much more liveable.
Shady, leafy suburbs have a higher average property value, lower crime rate and a reported increased sense of wellbeing.
When selecting plants for your design, be aware of what grows in our region and what will not.
By all means take ideas from gardening shows, magazines, social media and the internet, but be aware of the climate that this information is coming from.
It is also worth keeping in mind that in some cases, just because a plant is being stocked in a plant outlet, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it is suitable to grow in that region.
Another common mistake is overplanting.
Allow space for the plants to grow to their mature size.
If you feel that the garden looks too sparse when planted up, use short-term fill-in plants to bulk it up.
Remember also that, as plants grow, they will change the environment around them, allowing you to add additional plants that were not initially suitable to the area.
Finally, try not to select only plants that are looking their best at the time you are planting up the garden.
It is a sure way of having a garden that looks spectacular once a year and quite dull and uninteresting for the rest.
There is so much more to consider in design: sight lines, colours, shadow lines, plant compatibility, depth perception — the list goes on.
Taking time out to build all these components into your design is so worth the effort, and it will save you in time, money and frustration.
Growing For Success