Tour of our Flower and Vegetable Farm in Summer| Phaedra Gardeness

Hello everyone, welcome or welcome back. My name is Phaedra and we grow flowers and food in Australia. Today I'm giving you a tour of our farm and I'll talk you through all the plants and all the plans. So let's get into it. We're walking out to the flower field which was the flower field. It's now flowers and vegetables. Before we get started I'll just go through a couple of small things. I've still got my 2025 calendars up in my shop. The link is in the description. There's a listing if you want it shipped from Australia or from the US so you just need to choose whichever one works best for you and there's also some t-shirts in there. So there's a husband pie t-shirts and the bee t-shirts. I've got my buy me a coffee up and thank you so much everyone for your support. I'm actually going to talk about the fencing today. I'm using the funds from there for fencing and I've also got my Patreon and it's quite cheap to join. I talk about behind the scenes stuff like things I wouldn't otherwise want the whole world knowing on YouTube. One more quick thing that I forgot to mention. Next Saturday I'm doing a sit down sort of talking head video answering questions and just discussing a few major topics. So if you've got something you would like to hear my thoughts on or hear me talk about or you've got a question please put it in the comments and I will hopefully get to it for the next video. We have our field and it's beautiful o'clock right now. It's about 7am and very ironically it is 20 degrees which is beautiful and it's a little bit windy. I hope my mic isn't picking that up too badly but yesterday was so so so hot. It was 38 degrees yesterday and it was just so hot. The flowers and veggies have coped fine. We watered three times. We watered morning mid afternoon and then late later last night just to pull everything through. It has been a hot summer so normally the warmth would hit us a bit sooner in the season so the spring would start and warm up a bit sooner than what it did and then it would gradually warm up normally after Christmas. Not this time. It sort of stayed cold. We had a late frost and then bang we just had heat. So it has been a shock and it's also affected the plants a little bit. I didn't get things in as early as normal so everything's behind for two reasons. I've been going through burnout. If you're new here I've been going through burnout and I just couldn't get it done and I knew that once I got everything in I had to water every single day and the second reason is the weather. It's just it was so hard to find a window to get things in. So of course some plants haven't coped very well with then being tiny seedlings and the heat hitting them. So what we'll do is we'll start with plot one. This is the plot closest to the house and I actually have some big plans for this area. I'm just holding my hand over the mic to try to stop the wind blowing onto it. I will put the drone up now and I'll talk you through this. Our entire field is rows. They're 12 meters long by 1.2 meters wide but by the time I cut the edging in it's about a meter and then our pathways are 80 centimeters but they end up about a meter. So it's roughly one meter wide rows by one meter wide pathways and that's been the whole farm and it's been amazing. It's really easy for row cover to pop row cover on everything's uniform everything's the same size it doesn't matter what we're doing if we're putting row cover or plastic or anything else that we're doing everything fits everywhere and it's great. However since there's been some big changes I will link some videos if you're not caught up on that. Some big changes where the flower industry has kind of suffered from the economy a lot. It's pushed us out the door as retail florists and also in terms of our own happiness we just don't want to farm flowers intensively anymore. So we are doing flowers and vegetables. It's a much happier place but it also means I don't necessarily need these rows anymore. So what I'm doing with plot one and I'll pop the drone up. Has anybody seen the hobbit? And they're cute little gardens like it's just these like meandering little blobs that they plant in and it's so cute. So that's the inspiration. I'm going to turn plot I think I'm going to turn it into three this is just give you a rough idea three sort of blobs to plant into and it'll mainly have perennials well it'll have a heap of perennials. I might pop a few dwarf fruit trees and then come spring I can plant in my annuals and the flowers and the vegetables and I can put some trellises and things. So it'll just be like this cute little space you'll walk through my main entry of the garden which is on the corner and you'll just meander up through and up the back here where this big junk pile is I actually need a tractor. I want to cover this all in soil and turn it into a little hill you know the hobbit hill. It'd be so cool if I could put like a little hobbit house up there but it's it's going to end up too tall so I don't want to do that. Anyway so that's the plan for plot one and I think it is going to be so so so cute. I can't wait. I'll talk you through what we've got in plot one today like what all the plants are but over the season this is going to change. I'm going to start building these blobs. So it is going to look a lot messier than it is going to look a lot messier before it gets better. So we've got row one we've got Helia tenunda, Adalia just here and then I've just got random perennials scattered in there and that's just in preparation for the future. I've got a couple of artichokes, I've got some hollyhocks, I've put some in I think the rabbits or the kangaroos got those so that's the other challenge we're having here. I need to get the fencing in. It is in it is happening and then we've got row two which did have some corn in it. It's the Oaxacan corn so it's the green one but the wallabies got it so they've eaten the tops out of some of them which as you know buggers up corn and they eat the rest. Then I had a section of marigolds which I just can't get to germinate. I've tried three different sowings so I'm going to try I'm going to have to order new seed because I think there's something wrong with the seed and then up here I've got evening mist and it's one of my favorite dahlias. It is the most gorgeous purple it's so so so pretty. They're all going really well they've been pinched it's just slow and now the heat has hit they are struggling a little. Achillea just this patch is just sort of always there now. We grew it one year or two years or something it and it just does its own thing. Then we've got row three and this was just a volunteer it's actually looking like it's going to be Atlantic jewels I think it's going to be and it it was left in the ground so you can see the difference of these dahlias that didn't get lifted they're just growing beautifully and here's the little tiny ones that I've planted out and we're still waiting. Next we've got some sunflowers and these are the double dazzler. If you haven't seen the double dazzler sunflowers they're gorgeous they're similar to the teddy bears but they're not branching I found the teddy bears very difficult to work with. The double dazzlers are a much better stem configuration to work with in floristry and they're I find them much easier to grow in our climate and I still find them gorgeous fluffy full heads. Highly recommend them however I only got five because the wallabies and the rabbits came and ate them again so I'm really struggling with that. And then the rest of this row we've got some more dahlias and these are pink show which is another one that I love really pretty colors so I'll have the purples over here and then the pinks here the color watermelons like a pinky color so I'm kind of doing pinks and purples and then I've got some loofah just here and I did plant some beans in around there as well because I only got one loofah plant growing. Next row we had sunflowers but again look the tops have been eaten out of everything they've had a really good nibble on that and they've pretty much done it to everything which is getting very frustrating. Then I've got some more dahlias I've got evening mist something's happened to one here I'm missing one and then I've got some old prints which is a really big dinner plate and then I've got my next trellis and it is cucumbers this one's not looking too good but otherwise they're growing fine. My moon and stars watermelon which is gorgeous quite a small watermelon but it has the most beautiful sort of aquary teal sort of skin a deep color and then it's got the yellow tiny spots and then the bigger blotches like the yellow and it looks like moon and stars and they're so gorgeous and I now grow them every year I just really enjoy them the taste is not as good as like what we're used to eating commercially quite sweet they're just such a pretty a pretty little watermelon to grow and then the rest of this row I've just got some herbs sage dill and then we've just got right up the end here some salmon joy and a volunteer that I don't know what it is yet the next plot across here there's not a lot in here I've need to plant some things out I've got a globe artichoke which I didn't cover and I'm pretty sure the animals have eaten this section here needs to be weeded out and I'm putting next year's canterbury bells in here and then I've got some amaranth I think this is pygmy torch I'll just check yep pygmy torch and one sunflower because I'd planted this entire area with sunflowers and of course the animals got it again which you know they can just jump through and they do I've got my avalanche um dahlias in here they are a bit tightly packed I probably went a bit overboard with how closely I planted those together and I've got some root veg we've got beetroot which I've started picking and eating carrots which the animals have eaten the tops out of it really is getting frustrating the carrots are fine but you know it's not great and then I've got the next succession of radishes in here so now you'll see my rows kind of just stop I'll just go back a bit but reason being is this whole section here I want to turn into a beguile area and put a big trellis with grapevines and you know big pots with olives and things I'd like to pave the ground and everything so this will become a very nice seating area and as you meander through plot one which will become you know the blobs or the bubbles you'll kind of meander through and then you'll get to this big trellis area and then you'll have the hill behind which I think is going to look so good so I've started cleaning out this area here I actually use that soil somewhere else we've got our strawberry row and then we've got a finished row this was the colorway eye daisy it's cute and then when as it's finishing off it just well this isn't a good one this is old but it just gets like a little ball head a little bit similar to billy button but not if that makes sense and then my canterbury bells are up the end here and I could cut them all back and let them keep flowering but the weather has just been so hot that and they don't like the heat and I kind of feel like I'm best just to let them die off now and I'll cut them back and we use the row for something else it's just sometimes not worth all the effort to keep something alive against its natural tendencies to want to I also have a what is it called a zucchini here and I do have another one over in plot two somewhere over here so we'll move to plot two now I plan to keep plot two as is so I'll keep this as the rose because then it's much easier to teach things if you are growing for cut flower production I can continue to show you those you know tips and tricks if I keep plot two as rose so let's have a look at what I've got plot two was our very first section that we ever set up and the soil is really nice it's actually really beautiful now I did spend a lot of time over summer amending everything there's a couple of rows up the back there that need doing but otherwise it's really nice so we'll start with row one and we've got more evening mist in along here so the purple and then the rest of this row are my reds which are supposed to be for valentine's day which is in like six weeks seven weeks and they are so stunted so I did get them in late it was still enough time for them to grow and flower for valentine's but we've just had such difficult weather so up until this week we've had heaps of heat and then we'd get really cold nights and we'd have you know really cold days it's just been the most inconsistent weather which is becoming the pattern for here so it's just something we're probably going to have to get used to as the years move on and it's not great for dahlias they like that consistent warmth so I am struggling a little bit we will get flowers and they're going to look beautiful I just wish it was now like it's it's the end of December so we're about to hit January is the middle of summer for us and I'm still waiting for my plants and flowers and it's I'm trying not to get annoyed about it because it is what it is but and the other thing is with my health I just couldn't get it in any earlier oh but I really wish I did plot two still has some lux part in it and I'm ripping it all out because this whole garden is going to be edible all the flowers all the food eventually all the trees and the vines absolutely everything out here will be edible and lux bar is not edible don't eat it so I just need to come through and rip this out especially before it keeps going to seed which it's doing um here's more of my avalanche here um just a little small patch and then up the end of row two for plot two I've got another zucchini and this one's doing really well it's actually got some zucchinis on it it's looking really nice I just need to come out here and weed then row three it's kind of a bit haphazard I have some volunteer feverfew which of course I've just left it to come up because it's beautiful and I love it and it never hurts to have random flowers then I've got some corn which is the blue popcorn and some of it's doing okay some isn't the animals bit off most of the heads I can see here we've got one two three we've got four left which is not good and then some yellow squash I think just going back to the corn I think things like corn and carrots I either need to net them which I can't with corn it's going to grow too tall or not grow it until I've got the fencing in and it's just it's been really difficult for me to get these big projects done because I haven't felt well enough to do it so I'm not sure what to do it's a project that's going to cost too much money to pay someone to come and do I'm kind of at a little bit of a standstill I think what I need to do is just come out mark it all out I have spoken to a guy in town who digs post holes like he's got the attachment for his tractor so he's happy to come out and I'll pay him to dig all the holes so we don't have to do that and then we can just start setting poles um I just need to get a start on it and it needs to be done I just need to chip away at it the hard thing is everything needs to be chipped away at every morning I come out and I do some weeding to try to just not let it get too out of hand just to stay on top of it I wish I could keep it looking perfect but during these warm months when there's you know we're watering every day there's warm air the weeds just go crazy so at this point I'm just managing them which I'm happy with as long as nothing gets out of hand like it did I think it was season two where it was just you couldn't tell if it was weeds or flowers I'd be like plot three we'll have a look at that in a minute yeah it's just a lot of work like if I if I felt back to my normal self I could stay on top of this all but I can't be out here in the middle of the day anymore doing gardening in the heat um next year James is going to be at school so all the kids will be at school I think things will change for me a little bit then I'll have a lot more time to get things done but for now this is this is it what quinona gold it's coming up you just can't tell from the weeds and then I think this one is I just actually need to look at the label on this one because I can't remember where's my label at oh it's Wendy's place little tiny burgundy and she's beautiful like gorgeous I love her and then we've got and I can't remember what this is and I didn't put a tag in because I was like oh I'll remember that I didn't remember I'm trying to rack my brain what other vine would I plant it so I've got the loofahs it maybe it's a spaghetti squash and if it is I'll be so happy because I love it so much and everything grew really well but I'm just for the life of me not sure exactly what vine that is so sorry about that we don't have much to look at but there's a lot in from this point on so this little section here is spring onions which the animals really like to eat as well but they haven't which is good some more dahlias just in here this is atlantic jewels I think we've got carrots here but they're not coming up I would say I would say the weather got too hot and I'm going to have to resew that which is a pain in the butt but it is what it is and then I've had some swedes and they're not coming up either I think what I'm best to do is resew all of that and mulch it and probably most likely put a net on it for two reasons keeps the animals off but secondly it reminds us there's new little seeds in there and they need to stay moist and I've got my tomatoes they're actually growing this year which is making me happy they're looking okay I need to get in here and just give them a bit of a tidy up they're getting a little bit bunched bunchy what's the word like condensed too much leaves this one's not looking too good so yeah a bit hit or miss and then I've got one of my pumpkins here this is cinderella and I'm getting some big trellises to go in I'm getting three I need to get that ordered because they're ready to start trellising they want to climb now I really need to get that done these were my carnations that I just wanted to trial these are the chabad it was just a mix I don't love them I don't I think for the amount of time they take to grow it's not worth it and that they are really a pain to prepare like picking is pretty easy they've got nice long single stems you just pick them down low but prepping for floral work you've got to pull each of these little let me just zoom in for you you can see they've got these nodes and you've got to pull each individual leaf off you can't just run your fingers down and strip it because it will snap that at the node so I'm not they're very cheap to buy the wholesaler too like you can get a bunch of 10 for about six or seven dollars it's just it's just not I mean I can use them to fill in gaps but I don't think I'll bother growing these again we've got more dahlias these are just these are just like a collection of ones that I'm not sure if I wanted to retire or not so we've got marshmallow african sunrise tuscany juliet and strawberry also got african peach it was really pretty they were just ones I wasn't quite ready to say goodbye to yet but I might say goodbye to them because I've decided and I'll talk about this more next week I'm going to do a big Q&A next week but just very briefly I have retired a whole heap of dahlias like they're gone from my collection so if you bought mystery packs and you've got them that's great they won't be available next year I don't think well many of the varieties won't I've kind of tried to keep it to pinks and purples because what I thought was out in this are you know easy to grow but the pinks and the purples especially the purple it's a bit of a rare color in the garden and I wanted to maximize that and the best way to do that was with the dahlias so this garden isn't just going to be edible but I also want it to be beautiful so in the coming years you'll see this morph into something that I hope becomes more of a paradise sort of look hence getting rid of some of these dahlias and I never got onto the dahlia craze I don't get online and try and get the unicorns or it's just not me I find it ridiculous actually the amount of money people are paying for a dahlia tuber that you know people are buying it and they die anyway so I just I can't get into the hype of it I actually think it's ridiculous if you want my strong opinion I've got some more feverfew here I actually planted this one in and I'll put put it up on the screen what it is but with another local flower farmer we discovered that this variety that I had growing is not available in Australia so I'm really just growing this to keep that variety alive and then in here we have celosia which as you can see there is none because the animal's got it all again I've got one one single one now I've got something very exciting to tell you under this cover are the floret zinnias just one half of it the other half's basil so I've got out here the unicorn mix they've germinated really well we might have a peep under here you can see them in there germinated really well I put two seeds in each hole and they've all come up of course I had heard others talk about oh I can hear that wind on my mic hang on I need to turn around I had heard others talk about the germination rate with the floret zinnias not being great but mine's been really good I'd say it's close to 100 so I've just put mine straight in the ground I waited until the weather's really hot and I've kept it moist and I've netted it because if I didn't net it I would have nothing and I've got another I've got another section I'll show you around the houseyard in a minute but yeah it's going really good so yep zinnias basil more sunflowers these are just the radiance just sort of a standard and I did actually get an okay amount that survived without the animals eating them so I'm going to have some sunflowers I'll probably just interplant them with something else then we've got some more dahlias I've got venetian and thelma maude which hasn't come up and I've probably lost it I'd say more corn but look at it it's already getting its head on it and they're so small I'll tell you what went wrong I grew the seedlings out in sort of deep little seedling things pots but I'd left them in there for too long and by the time I actually planted them out the roots from the corn had started to go through the bottom of the pot which is a big no-no they corn does not like their root system disturbed so it's stunted their growth and we've also had some cold snaps of weather which also stunts their growth and then a few of these the animals bit the tops off which obviously stunts their growth it stops their growth to finish off plot three we've got jack pumpkins which is one of our favorite pumpkins and this is another spot where a trellis is going so to show you there's a trellis going over here there is one going there and one going across there so basically every second row and I'm doing them in a way that I can move them so at the end of the season if I don't like the position of them I can pop them up and put them somewhere else the rest of this row pretty excited about we've got amareth we've got hot biscuit coral fountain which is growing amazing and then we've got the velvet curtain it it is patchy germination surprisingly the animals didn't eat this it's my seed so I actually saved seeds so it's the seed I saved from last year which means there will be some cross germination I might get a bit of a surprise but so far the seedlings are looking true so we'll see what happens once they actually start to flower but that was a success I did have some mini cabbage animals ate the whole lot I've got show-and-tell which is a and then my spring onions this is the section ready to eat or they've gone a bit past it but I'll still eat it I have intermingled it with liastris very hard to see because it grows so slow and it's so little and this one got knocked over by the hose it's very hard to see but I am hoping to just have some long random things coming up there now the last rose a disaster this was my new plant out of raspberries which got eaten constantly eaten by the animals which we've established the plants hate so do I so it's been constantly eaten this bed is very weedy I've got to come through and wait again so the weeds have kind of taken over again I just am having a lot of trouble with this bed I'll persist with it but I may have to just start a new row for the raspberries and forget about this I do have a couple of dahlias in here too there's a couple of dahlias here and I just can't remember what the variety was and this was the old bed of amaranth so there's some amaranth coming up and then up the end here we've got our sea holly or aryngium and as usual it is gorgeous look at this white spider oh that is so interesting can I get a good shot so the aryngium is really really good for pollinators and it seems spiders I don't really pick from it that much in bouquets it's so spiky I've had people complain about it the other thing with growing aryngium it it will absolutely take over and the taproot is just so deep it can be like a foot and a half deep especially these long ones it could be a couple of feet into the ground once you've got it it's going to be very very hard to get rid of it so if you don't want it and it comes up everywhere like the seed spreads like crazy and it'll just pop up in all your garden beds and you'll be forever pulling it out the trick is you've got to pull it out when you're noticing it's very small so that you can actually get it back out and you've got to get all of that taproot or it's going to just grow again it's pretty I do wish I'd put it in an area where it wasn't going to just take over like this and where I could contain it much better really really good for the pollinators though they love it all right plot three this is a disaster but let me talk you through it because there is a plan so these three rows are just I need to get in here and empty them out and take the net off I've just had such little time to get things done I've had to prioritize other things but essentially plot three instead of putting the hothouses up the back here I was going to have really big cocoon tunnels up there um actually we've got one cocoon tunnel already I'm going to split it in half and it's going to go in here so plot three will now be you know tunnels two tunnels which is why I haven't prioritized getting in here and fixing things I've got enough to get sort of one tunnel here and one tunnel here and then I'll have a little bit of space up this end to just continue with because I've got my my bean trellis here just I'll have maybe two rows this and this and I'm going to turn the whole lot into one big garden bed that'll kind of join up with my pumpkin patch so that will be plot three if you can imagine it so big pumpkin patch and then two tunnels which is going to be excellent for shoulder season especially for the vegetables and the plants that we'll put in there will be mainly for mother's day we plan to still do the mother's day sales because it's such big money I'll put the ornamental kale the stock we'll have the chrissy's chrysanthemums and probably some other little bits and pieces that can survive the cold but it slows them down so that's the plan just to stop these plants from slowing down and then we'll put some winter veg in there as well so that we can you know eat through the winter we're up at the pumpkin patch I've just redone this area just to make it a bit neater I've got one more section of mulch to put in but basically I've got pumpkins and watermelon in here us Australians eat a lot of pumpkin it's sort of one of our staples and we don't eat it as a dessert it's a it's a savory it's a savory dish we'll roast it we make soup with it I like to roast it in little tiny cubes and I then warm it up and throw it in salads we will just we just like pumpkin so we like to have them to store over winter because they get quite pricey to buy in the winter so that's the plan here and then here I've got some watermelon so Kensington I think it is they're not doing too good but anyway this is going to be my sweet potato bed I've got the slips started got to get them in and then these are my potatoes and they're really loving life and the plan here is as they grow I'll keep filling this bed up with more soil and so it'll force more potatoes to grow but I'm also filling up my bed as the season goes it sort of took the pressure off to completely fill the bed I have a video coming out during the middle of the week about those beds how I filled them up because it is a lot of soil volume and it's expensive if you have to buy the soil or if you've got to source it from your own property or use the compost it's a big task so I'm going to show you how to fill those big raised tubs up so keep an eye out for that video our last little section is my shade tunnel which I'm loving it is a bit ugly but you know a garden is a garden especially a working garden and I'm really happy with it it's filled with well I think beautiful things some are just kind of in the holding pattern I've got some ornamental kale that we grew it's growing really well like that was an experiment we grew it in the hot house over winter in tubs and we put it out here and it is amazing the only thing is about it you can see this one has no color to it and that's because once they start to grow they need a cold chill to develop their color and it didn't get to do that so that with our experiment that's the only thing about growing it in the off season when it shouldn't be growing and forcing it to grow it needs a really good chill and I can't remember for how long but it needs a good chill to develop its color and so if we do this we just have to have kale with no color so I'm not sure if that's what I want so I have a few things in here my dragon fruit which you may have seen me plant out this one's growing really well which I am happy about because this is the supermarket variety one just the commercial it's the pink outer with the white inner it is going really really well this one isn't doing well and this one at the back is doing terrible so I'm hopeful I think I'll get this potted up soon I'd say there's roots down there I'll get this potted up soon and we'll start the well start the experiment but we'll keep the experiment going and then I've got my hydrangeas I've had to do this shade cloth it's four layers now especially up this end just to keep them protected they were starting to get sunburned but they're actually growing really well I've even got a flower which I need to cut off but they're growing really really well I've got some pileas in here which are doing much better out here than they were inside it was just so much work keeping them alive inside the house and these are the sweet potato slips I need to just snap those off put them in water get the roots going and then get them out these are snow pea shoots which we eat we love to eat it on salads I've found this I know you can grow them in water in jars I don't have a lot of success with that I just grow it in soil and then I cut them off and I've got my ornamental kale started I started the ornamental kale on the 15th January last year I've started this a month early I just want to see what happens I'll start another lot on the 15th of January as well because I know that works in our climate but yeah I'm just going to see can I get it a bit earlier can I get the stem length a bit longer and I use this for Mother's Day sales and my wildly unsuccessful attempt again to grow lettuce from seed so as you can see there's lots and lots of things in this garden it's just it's slow I can't wait for another month or another six weeks when it's just absolutely taken off but I know what's going to happen we're going to get normally by this time of year it's an absolute full brimming garden but because I'm so behind we're going to get a very short window of amazingness unless we get a very late frost this year which I'm hoping for you never know let's go over to the house yard and I'll show you what we've got growing over there the wind is really picking up so hopefully we can get through this before it gets really bad we're in our house yard and we've slowly been building this up over the years to be you know we want the house yard to be sort of like a cutting garden but a beautiful one that's a landscaped one so that's the slow progress on this and you know then eventually we'll have plants that you walk through out to get out to the flower field and the whole thing will be sort of I mean if we can landscape the entire seven and a half acres we will but it'll be a long time away first up the pride and joy our hothouse with the planter boxes and this is the cosmos but it is not coping at all the heat just kind of took off a bit too quick I don't know what's going to happen historically when we've had this problem and the cosmos hasn't had a chance to grow it just doesn't grow and then we kind of just don't get much off it all season we've kind of found if we don't get it in in early spring and get it growing before the heat hits it really struggles and we had frost so the cosmos that we got in early got hit by frost and died so there's not much we can do about it we've got a little hydrangea bed there this is a new garden that I sort of put in a couple of years ago the hydrangeas and the idea was eventually when they get really big the idea is to be able to sit over there on our patio and have a sea of color in the background and with the pinks if they stay pink we've got the blue house in the background rather than looking at the garden as a massive big hole which I do do like I plan it as a whole I also look at the little vistas and little areas that are cute little things to take photos of we're nice leaving for work I'll take you up the back here I just can't win with these animals they're so frustrating here's my pineapple plant it's very interesting and I've put it here so people see it when they come to the house but it is just having the wallaby families around is so nice they're so cute to watch but they are so destructive it's so frustrating every new plant that we get we have to kind of just buy one of them sit it there for a week or so and see if they eat it but this is my hellebore bed and it does have a couple of hydrangeas mixed in amongst it because the plan was then in the summer the hydrangeas take over but I think it's too shady for them which sounds ironic but they really don't get very much sun here at all this tree is huge and amazing and very very very shady so there's not much chance I have an oyster plant over here which this section here gets too much sun and the oyster plant is getting too much sun so this little section has been a challenge to plant out in the winter it's fine it looks amazing in the winter for the summer it's it's been a challenge to work out what to put in there when there's this sort of harsh divide between not enough sun and too much sun so I need to work on that I actually wouldn't mind putting a big sculpture on the corner where all the sun is and I'd actually love to have a huge concrete orb like you know nearly as tall as me that would be so cool but I think I'm gonna have to make it myself because can you imagine the cost any ferns or you know leafy plants the wallabies will get so they've had a they don't eat canna lilies which is amazing and I love canna canna lilies so I've got some little pockets of canna lilies here I've got one here and one around the other side and then I've got a lot of hydrangea plants in here but as you can see even though they're in the shade yesterday was so hot and it's burnt them if I plant the plants in pots that the wallabies would otherwise get they won't go near it even the little short pot I don't know what it is about pots but they don't like pots so that's my trick anyway the hydrangeas back here are really pretty so the ones down around there are pink and these ones are more purple and blue so I'm pretty happy about that and then I've got a couple of whites which it won't matter what the composition of the soil is they will always stay white so I'm loving that yes my ivy's taking over you all warned me thankfully it's such a slow growing plant where we are I can get on top of it but you's all told me I will sort that out though I'm as I said I'm in the process of working on this garden and cleaning it all up and that's one of the projects but it does look really cool look how it's growing up that tree and sadly this tree my paloma paloma is dying we need to get a cherry picker in and cut out all the dead branches because they're starting to fall on us and I'm going to start propagating and growing a couple of new ones and pop them in nearby so hopefully they're an okay size by the time this one's finished agapanthus now the funny thing about agapanthus are for us they are such a common thing in the garden they're everywhere they grow like weeds like people will give them away they'll dig them out they have trouble getting on top of them I really love them I think they're beautiful I've always loved them um but and I know in other parts of the world they're not as easy to grow we don't even have to water them and they'll grow here which is amazing when you think about how hot and dry it gets but yeah I really love my agapanthus my very very first video on this channel was spray painting the the dried dead heads spray painting them which I've got a whole heap this year that I'll probably do again it's it sounds silly but it looks cute it's a little bit of fun and it tricked people they'd come and they'd say how did you get what did they say how did where did you get the pink and the yellow agapanthus from and I'm like oh it's spray painted but isn't this a cute little view more canners here and here this is our little pathway that goes all through the back of that garden um irises are finishing I've got this gorgeous little plant and I'll put the name of it up on the screen but it is going to be so gorgeous I've got another one in another garden I'll show you that when I'm done I've got my blue spruce we've got the glads that are just finishing off some are about to fly out the back but the reds are finishing which was great because we had them for Christmas I do have some dahlias in amongst here to come up euphorbias which really take over I've just cut that back I've got a salvia it never really does too well up there it just kind of it it looks like it might flower this year but it barely flowers the easter daisy which is a really really pretty cut flower it just self-sees itself in there I just let it go it's beautiful I love it and then around here it's mainly bulbs there's a lot of daffodils and bulbs and I still need to plant out this the problem I'm having is this grass is so invasive it's cocoon and I can't keep it out of that garden so until I can get on top of it there's no point in planting anything in here because every time I pull that grass out it's going to disturb the roots of the plants so this is just in a holding pattern I need to come in with some nice fresh fresh mulch and just mulch it out this bay tree does amazing here I'm actually thinking the one up the back doesn't like being under that stump of the gum tree so my bay and then I've got some more of the paniculatus I've got one a little one here it's doing quite well one just under that bay and then I've got around this birdhouse I've got one here and one here so you can imagine by next season and I'll show you my advanced ones in a minute but you can just imagine there'll be these huge fluffy white balls scattered through there so this garden's slowly coming together it's taken me years to work out what to do here because there's so many different little microclimates in here like full shade part shade full sun baking hot sun and I need to get the watering system in and I'm just going to put a couple of sprinklers in just to blast the whole lot with water that's probably my easiest um solution here we've got our hedge I'm about to water that it is really struggling the wallabies are just eating it like there's no tomorrow we are really really struggling and I know that some of you has recommended that we cut cut it right off the problem is the wallabies you can see over here they've eaten all the lower leaves off and if we cut the tops out there'll be nothing left for the plant to sort of utilize it'll have nothing left so we couldn't cut them completely off even though that would have been a much better way to have these hedges growing so we're just trying to hobble them through summer it is a little bit disheartening though Moroni's put in a massive one for a client and hers is looking amazing because the kangaroos and the wallabies can't get to it so hers is really bushed out so it's a bit of a shame we're just hoping that the root system is developing really well and we hope that it'll eventually just take off and then it won't matter what the wallabies are doing to it but fingers crossed now I'm walking over to my new newish I put it in last year garden bed in front of the shed and it looks a bit wild at the moment but it's really cool and I love it and I'll talk you through it here it is and we've just had the most amazing flush of red glads in time for Christmas I need to come in and just cut all the mess out now basically but we had the huge hollyhocks I'm just letting them set their seed we've got the paniculata hydrangeas this is full sun like baking hot full sun and look at them they did get a little bit burnt yesterday because it was so hot and that'll happen a couple more times this season I'm sure but overall there's no way a hydrangea could ever do that otherwise it just looks so good I'm on the lookout for a rock to put here and another big one here and I've got my poles the trellis poles still need to get it up so that's going to go in along there and it'll just hide this ugly section of the house so when people come up the driveway I mean most people are looking at the garden anyway but they'll just see the garden the trellis will be here and then they'll get past so the trellis will hide all of that and then they'll see the house which is a bit of a mess at the moment but I am putting like a arbor at the front here for an entry and it'll just end up looking so cute so back here I'll take you through some of these little plants because we've got some really cute stuff in here so the lambs ear it is growing so beautifully and it's because the tap is behind here and it leaks so it's constantly leaking onto here I love these grasses I'm not sure in the name I've got some sedum autumn joy autumn joy and I need to get more of it I love it it's the prettiest green for summer and then it's going to have its flowers for autumn which is going to be really good I've got another one of these plants here and it's going to fill out and look really beautiful right there next year's hollyhocks are taking off so this bush here is a spirea it's pink spice it is gorgeous the foliage is so pretty and yes it does work really well in bouquets I just don't use it very much because I don't have a lot of it but I am going to put more in but you can see the tips have that little blush tinge to them so very pretty more hydrangeas I've got some astilbes in here and there's another one over there and this is the prairie smoke it is really bushing out really well the only problem is the wallabies eat the flower and if you've seen prairie smoke it is such a shame that we can't get the flower on that because it is this whimsical beautiful little flower I'll pop a picture up so you can see so I you know it's a bit sad that we can't have that and then we've got the hydrangeas we've got some dahlias in the back there I've got I think it's samoan prince and oh I can't think what the other one is they're just random little I've got a little uh chrysanthemum I've got a few chrysanthemums through here because I want it for autumn to look really good I've got some sage a little bit of lavender down in here this this side was planted out last year and you can see it's really come into itself this side was planted out this season and that's why everything's so small but I've pretty much just copied plants but you can see the ugly section of house that I'm trying to hide I do have one little lonely peony here I plan to put peonies out in the new perennial beds the hobbit style ones out in the field so if I can put a couple in here just to scatter around the house yard and then I'll put a heap out in the field you know this this five-year plan that we've just had is now a 10-year plan I've got more of the sunday phrase it's just and I do have some cosmos here and that was just me throwing seed the start of the season it did it did quite well and then I've just got some little creepers and some more chrysis which the animals are eating but it looks pretty nice that garden and then of course on the house we've got our grapes and it's looking really pretty I just need to clean up the house our last little section is just around in here I've bought some cactus and succulents I need to get them in but this is just it looks a bit messy at the moment just some random things I've got um violets there's some nasturtiums uh I can't remember what this is Morona calls it neospital or something like that I don't know what it is um ivy which I really love as you've probably noticed just one hydrangea my herbs are over here I should have really cleaned all this up but look at this isn't this so gorgeous the woman's shed in yak in town makes them they're on a spike so it just sits in the garden like a little teacup isn't that so cute my herbs and just some other plants over here everything's kind of struggling because it's been too hot so I don't have a lot to show there thank you for watching next Saturday I'm doing a sit down video I'm filming it prior so if you've got questions please pop them in the in the comments and let me know so I can answer those questions but I'll be talking about how things are going and the you know deeper plans for the field some collaboration ideas and fails so that's next Saturday and in the meantime happy gardening those in the northern hemisphere I hope you're staying cozy and warm those of us in the southern hemisphere I hope we're surviving and I'll see you in the next video bye