Amazing Recycled Garden Features ¦ Great Home Ideas

It's often said that rules are supposed to be broken, but what if you never learned the rules in the first place? Well, that can lead to some creative and unique ideas that make you see things in a different light. This is Roel Raymer, and it is the creation of self-confessed plant hoarder, Lyle Philippe. He's scoured the world looking for unusual plants and materials, and he's brought them all back here to his garden and nursery right near Geelong. And there is so much inspiration here, there's bound to be something to make your home garden stand out from the crowd. Lyle, this place is mind-blowing. What you've created is insane. Tell me, how long have you had the property for? I've been here nearly 20 years now, and when we first came, it was an old nursery. So this area here was actually an open paddock. All of this banks was bought in? Yes, so this is a natural soil level here. Everything that's raised up has been brought in. Lucky with the freeway beside us has its benefits to a certain degree, apart from sound. We were able to get some fill brought in to create the landscape and take it to another level. So you obviously have some incredible plants in this garden as well. I mean, I'm quite good with my plants, and I'm walking around here and I feel like a complete novice. Where did they all come from? So it's an accumulation of collecting from old collectors, importing seed from overseas, and just really growing things that most people would see as a small plant, but maybe growing it into the ground and giving it its full potential. You've got this combination of plants, lots of sort of metal and objects as well, but tell me about these stones. This area we're in was in volcanic area, and under the ground is big lava flows, and these came from a development around Werribee where they redid the train lines, and they had to drill in big pylons into the ground, and these were the central cores out of a big drill. I've only just seen this cat up in the tree. That's our Cheshire cat, yeah. That's what I like about gardens, is if you go in and you think you've seen it all, but then the next time you go in and go, did I see this, did I miss that? I don't want people to see it all at once. Do you have any favourite parts of this garden? The whole garden's my favourite, but this area is particularly nice. It has these beautiful characterful peppercorns, and they develop this knobbly base, creates an atmosphere here. Yeah, cool. Can we go and have a look at some more of the garden? Yeah, let's go for a wander. So we've got a couple of unusual trees here, don't we? Yeah, this is an unusual genus called Shottia, it's from Africa. There's three different species in this genus. What's this one with the amazing pods on them? So this is Shottia afra, it has a nice fine foliage and beautiful waxy pink flowers. And this one? So this one's got a larger leaf, and this is Shottia brachypetala, it has more waxy red flowers, and they're bird attracting as well. But they're also drought tolerant, so they're good hardy for droughty areas. So where do you source something like this? So there's some actually were imported 100 years ago into gardens in Victoria, and the other two species I imported from Africa about 20 years ago. Yeah, wow. So your plant knowledge is obviously really good. Are you trained in horse culture, in design? Not trained formally, no, it's all learnt, and also born out of loving plants and collecting and then growing. There's literally thousands here, but I do know all the plants, yes. All of them? All the plants, and mostly where I got them and what their history is. I'm jealous of that memory, I'm jealous of it. And what are these ones up here? Are they like a... Allo. Allo ferrox? Allo speciosa. So tell me about all this bluestone around here and these lovely sort of sinuous curves. So this is unusual bluestone because it's narrow, and it was beside tram tracks in Geelong. So it's still, the tram tracks in Geelong are still underneath the roads, and when they do road work, they often have to lift them up. So this came from there. How do you find something like that? You just... Just driving by and observing. And then going in. And going in, knock knock, say hello, find out who's in charge, and then try and talk your way in. Yeah, wow. And these ones? These lovely rounded ones? So these are beautiful capping stones, and they came off a big wall around an estate in Melbourne. Right. This lady didn't want them in the garden, so I rolled them onto the trailer, and that was it. Okay. Something tells me we've only just scratched the surface of Lyle's weird and wonderful garden. He's got plenty more surprises for us a little later on. Recycling around the garden is nothing new, from compost to chickens and everything in between. But the beauty about using recycled products is they've got a story, and that will make your garden instantly feel more established. Which is exactly what this corner needs. I'm thinking a sculptural focal point, and those sleepers and bricks will be absolutely perfect. But first things first, I need to do my clear out. This veggie patch, well, it was a nice idea, but you're never going to grow anything in there with all this shade. So I'm going to rip this out. Don't worry. I'm going to use it for next year's recycling story. My idea for using the sleepers is to put them on a vertical plane. That way, they'll have that real sculptural element. I'm then going to use the bricks around the base to add an artistic touch, but whilst I'm working with them, I'm going to put a line down here to work as a brick edge to stop the grass growing into the garden bed. First things first, though, I need to dig some pretty big holes, because those sleepers weigh a ton. To finish off around the base of our sleepers, I'm using our recycled bricks. Now, I'm going to lay these in a bit of a stretcher pattern. That's going to add some weight to the base of the sleepers and make them look better in the landscape. I'm just doing it roughly on sand, so I can take some out and use some planting pockets to soften the whole thing. Now, you could just leave your sleepers just like this as a sculptural element, but I'm going to take them to the next level and put some plants on them. Now, these fantastic-looking things are called air plants, and they're covered in tiny little hairs that suck moisture and nutrients right out of the air. The good point about them is they don't need any soil, so we can literally stick these on to improve the look of our sleepers and add a bit of greenery. I've also got some bromeliads, which I'm going to separate out and put those lower down. So, to secure these tillandsias to the post, I'm just using some silicon, which is absolutely fine for the plant. It's not going to kill it at all. You just want a nice blob on there to glue it in. I'm using clear stuff, so when it dries, it's not going to look offensive. I'm going to be using a little bit of wire, which you've got here, that I'm just going to push into the crevices of the sleeper. That's just going to hold it in place like I've done with this one until it goes off. Now, you could leave those there. That'll be fine, or you can take them off if you don't like the appearance. For the bromeliads, I've actually drilled a hole with a spade bit into the sleeper, and I've done it on a bit of an angle so we can really anchor these in. Now, bromeliads will need a little bit of potting mix around the base, but not too much, really. They're just putting their roots out to anchor. They take their moisture from the cup, so you want that to be facing up. These ones will just sit in just like that. You can see how this sleeper is really coming alive. To fill out the rest of our garden bed, I'm going for a tropical theme, and that's because it suits the fact we're in deep shade here. Around our little pavers, I'm using this great ground cover called Baby's Tears. It does have a botanic name, but it's almost impossible to pronounce. Let's have a go. I think what I like about this is it's going to creep all around the bricks, in between all the gaps, and really soften the whole thing. All these plants underneath the star jasmine are going to love these shady conditions. We've got silver ladies, we've got bird's nest ferns, philodendrons, even walking iris, but my favorite part of the garden has to be the sleepers. We've taken a material that wasn't being used, put it into an area of the garden that wasn't loved, and we've turned it into a fantastic focal point.