text: Year-Round Goodness - Fact Sheets - Gardening Australia - GARDENING AUSTRALIA
  SERIES 32 | Episode 36
  Sophie visits a diverse and beautiful garden, carefully designed to offer interest in every season in the South Australian Adelaide Hills.
  Some gardens are primed for a spring flush, others for summer flowering, but some gardens manage to look good all year round. This professional gardener lives, breathes, and works with plants every day, so his home patch provides a place where he can experiment through the seasons, and record the changes.
  Adam Hancock and partner Phoebe Conway have lived on their medium-sized suburban block for 7 years. The garden has many of the elements you might see in a larger garden - a native bed of local plants, a dry creek bed that turns into a wetland when it rains, perennial beds and a backyard dedicated to edibles. Whether it's ornamental or edible, it all looks stunning.
  The garden was virtually a blank slate when they arrived. A few deciduous trees, eucalypts and lots of weedy species like ivy, naturalised weeds were the only things present.
  Adam is constantly developing the front native garden bed. He rarely waters, so it becomes 'dormant' in summer. It's here where Adam 'tests' some of his favourite natives to assess their 'summer toughness.'
  He's slowly filling the area with indigenous species. "Observation of your local flora is key. We have so many endemic plants with fantastic garden potential. I currently have small Ixodia achillaeoides in flower." He's clipped Acacia rupicola into a small dense shrub. He's also started with readily available natives such as Lomandra 'taninka', Poa 'Kingsdale' (a grass that responds well to winter pruning).
  In contrast, to the front garden, Adam's perennial bed is mostly exotics, and you can see the European naturalistic design at play.
  The focal point is a clipped ball of Germander fruticans. These naturalistic perennial gardens never lose interest over the seasons – only the shape, texture and colours change. Grasses and small stretches of carefully placed hedging add texture and definition to the planting.
  Plant many species and varieties - "There are about 20-30 species in this bed with multiple varieties of each one."
  Maintenance at the right time - "Perennial beds need less maintenance than a lawn, but they need the work to be done at the right time. All weeds need to be dealt with before planting to reduce maintenance. Nearly all the work is done in winter when you can prune the finished growth, move plants and divide perennials to create more plants. Also add compost or extra mulch."
  Start with Salvias - "Salvias are a great place to start. They suit our climate there's such a great range."
  The back garden falls heavily on the side of edibles with substantial, hand-built timber vegetable beds that sit behind a beautifully crafted stone terrace running the length of the back of the house. To make the spaces more aesthetically pleasing and to attract pollinators, Adam has added many flowers to the garden. The terrace is planted up with flowering perennials such as rudbeckia, gaura *, echinacea and eryngium. The back yard also houses the cut flower garden where dahlias are in full bloom.
  The functional backyard is laid out in a neat grid. There are easily maintained pathways that are large enough for wheelbarrows. Adam says, "A tidy vegie garden helps reduce the feeling of being overwhelmed by the jobs!" Along the fence, stone fruit and citrus are growing, along with pomegranates, figs and an olive hedge. There's also is a greenhouse for seed raising and an area for small scale food composting.
  Adam's partner Phoebe has started spending a great deal of time in the garden too, growing and picking the edible crops for cooking and preserving the excess in jams, pickles and kimchi.
  She is also using the edible flowers from the garden in her food photography. "I tend to go for violas, borage, pansies, chive flowers, mint and herb flowers."
  No matter what the season or what you are growing, Adam and Phoebe's garden is proof that you can have beauty and productivity – all-year round!