Next Meeting

Saturday 1^st May 2021,  10.00am for 10.30am start

Landscaping with Shane Doherty at Di Clark’s 17 Tranquil Place Rosedale South

Dear Members,                                                                                                                                              In May we will be visiting my garden in Rosedale, and we will be spending the whole day at the property. If you have seen my garden and are concerned about the slopes and steps, please don’t be put off as we will be concentrating on the easily accessible parts of the garden and will be able to congregate on the deck to view different areas from above.

Once again Shane Doherty has agreed to assist us with her skills and insights.                                         Shane is a Landscape Designer with a wealth of experience.                                                                                                    

The house at 17 Tranquil Bay Place was built in 2009 on a large steep block running East to West The house has had two owners before me and both were keen gardeners. When I first looked at the house from the outside I thought that it was too hemmed in by vegetation and I was not interested. On inspection I changed my mind.

The garden we will be viewing is an established garden which was originally designed as a rambling exotic garden with a smattering of natives.                                        

I have written about some of the problems I have with this garden in a previous newsletter, so I will use this space to highlight some of the ideas I have and that I hope we can discuss at the meeting. I do want to create a space that people would call a native garden but I do not want to remove plants just for the sake of it. This means establishing which plants are the backbone plants and working around them.

I am aiming to change it to a garden where plants are selected for their suitability to the area. The garden has many different microclimates allowing for a large variety of plants to be accommodated. I would also like to simplify the plantings, placing the plants in groups rather than scattered rather inappropriately (I think) around the garden. My natural bias is towards local plants and plants that are subtle in their beauty. Red tipped Callistemon and Leptospermum and small flowering shrubs such as Correas, Platysace and Dampiera would feature

.