How to grow a cottage garden in Perth

A cottage garden in Perth? Here’s how.

Thorpe garden. Picture: Kim Woods Rabbidge

The biggest problem with gardening in Perth? “We garden on sand,” says Deryn Thorpe. “It’s infertile and water runs straight through it, so the starting point is to build up the soil.”

Thorpe should know – the garden writer, horticultural consultant and all-round garden media personality has decades of experience. A self-confessed “fanatical gardener”, she also works in her family’s revegetation and landscaping business, leads garden tours and produces an award-winning fortnightly podcast, All the Dirt, with Steve Wood.

Thorpe garden. Picture: Kim Woods Rabbidge

Her own garden, which she shares with husband Bill Davey, is in the inner northern suburb of Mount Lawley. It surrounds a gracious Federation house on 1200sqm, but is just 20 years old. “Apart from two trees, the garden is all new,” says Thorpe. “To improve the sand it’s pretty well standard now in Western Australia to add powdered clay, either bentonite or kaolin, to mix into the top 30cm of soil along with compost. It makes all the difference, and clay doesn’t break down and disappear like compost does.”

Thorpe garden. Picture: Kim Woods Rabbidge

The style is eclectic cottage, full of climbing and bush roses, perennials and annuals that fill the beds with flowers in all seasons. “I love the abundance of cottage gardens,” Thorpe says. ”It’s fantastic for someone who likes to experiment – you can put something new in without it looking like it wasn’t intended. In formal gardens you can’t make all those changes.” The large front garden also includes her vegetables, grown in wicking beds that are partly hidden from view by surrounding roses. In a dappled shade area, hydrangeas mingle with begonias, fuchsias, plectranthus and lime-green Pelargonium ‘Ann Tilling’.

Thorpe loves heritage roses, especially tea roses that stay evergreen and bloom through winter in her garden – ‘Comtesse de Labarthe’ is one of her favourites. Surrounding the roses are perennials such as salvias, scabiosa, pelargoniums and daylilies, to which she adds masses of spring annuals grown from seed such as Queen Anne’s lace, sweet peas, poppies and cosmos. “I want as much colour as possible and that really full, abundant look, which is easier with seeds,” she explains. Spring bulbs include ranunculus, anemones, Spanish bluebells, babianas and jonquils that tolerate warm climates. Yes, she admits it is a lot of maintenance to keep it looking good all the time but it is her joy as well as her profession.

Thorpe garden. Picture: Kim Woods Rabbidge

Some parts of the garden are lower maintenance, such as a native section. “Western Australia has some of the most beautiful native plants, and the selected cultivars bred for home gardens are wonderful to include, such as the dampieras, scaevolas and dwarf grevilleas,” Thorpe says.

The courtyard area at the back of the house is hot but roses such as ‘Climbing China Doll’ thrive on chain swags between posts. In pots, Thorpe sticks to succulent senecios such as ‘Blue Chalksticks’ and pretty echeverias that “look like roses” and can survive Perth’s hot, dry summers on minimal water.

“My passion for plants just never stops,” she laughs. “I see something new and I have to try it myself. That’s why cottage style works for me because I can always squeeze in one more plant.”

Q&A

Is applying liquid fertiliser and seaweed to leaves harmful? Don’t they block the leaves’ stomata and disrupt evapotranspiration? Malcolm Robinson, by email

Foliar feeding is not harmful but is not very efficient. Much of the benefit comes from fertiliser running off leaves into the soil anyway. However, it is a beneficial way to rapidly supply major nutrients, or to apply iron, zinc and manganese to plants growing in alkaline soils, or to feed plants where soil nutrients are stolen by aggressive plants nearby. Nutrients enter through the leaf cuticle and stomatal pores without detriment.

My foxgloves are huge. I thought they finished flowering but they keep coming up. What should I do after flowering? Trish, Port Macquarie

Foxgloves traditionally are biennials that grow a rosette of foliage in their first year and produce 1-1.5m-tall flower spires in spring and summer the second year, before dying. Newer strains can flower within one year. After the first flush, cut the main flower stems just above the basal leaves to encourage several shorter flower stems to follow. Foxgloves readily self-seed so you can have an ongoing supply. The plants are highly poisonous.

What small plants would add colour and interest to our sunny and windy triangular bed in the dry tropics? Karen Kerr, North Queensland

Try dwarf ixoras, Barleria ‘Purple Dazzler’, Cuphea ‘Mad Hatter’ in mauve or white, blue Evolvulus pilosus and society garlic (Tulbaghia). Natives include yellow buttons (Chrysocephalum apiculatum), strawflower (Xerochrysum bracteatum), native gardenia (Gardenia psidioides) and white fan-flower (Scaevola albida).

Send your questions to: [e-mail] or Helen Young, PO Box 3098, Willoughby North, NSW 2068. Website: helenyoung.com.au. The best question for December/January wins a Nylex retractable 20m hose reel worth $149.