The biggest horticultural event in the southern hemisphere has fresh ideas for your garden

The Melbourne International Flower and Garden Show is the biggest horticultural event in the southern hemisphere. From aged timber fences to delicate layers of soil, this year’s show gave Australian gardeners a lot to think about, no matter where they live.

Indigenous and native plants were the key players across this year’s displays, including this gold-winning garden, SaltBush, by Phillip Withers in collaboration with Fiona Brockhoff.Credit: Megan Backkhouse

Keep it local

Now that they permeate every layer, it’s hard to believe there was a time when local plants were relegated to the show’s sidelines. Indigenous and native plants were the key players across this year’s displays, including the two gold-medal-winning show gardens: Through the Looking Glass by Stem Landscape Architecture & Design and ID Landscaping and Construction (which also won best in show), and SaltBush by Phillip Withers in collaboration with Fiona Brockhoff.

Tussocks of prickly grasses, shrubs (both shaggy and clipped), wildflowers, trees, wetland species, aquatic plants all had a look in. Robust, resilient and beautiful, there was native fare to suit gardeners with all climatic conditions.

The attention to Australian flora continued inside, where RMIT fashion design students made gumnuts, wildflowers and wattle foliage appear as elaborate as silk and sequins. Native flowers and leaves were incorporated – alongside exotic fare – into a string of other floristry displays, including the super-abundant gold-winning one by Thrive Flower School.

A gold-winning super-abundant floristry display by Thrive Flower School.Credit: Megan Backhouse

Imperfection is OK

Could weathered wood and gabion walls be the new hedges? The cleanly shorn greenery of previous years was this year replaced by hedge-like structures of aged timber, stone off-cuts and raw concrete reinforcement mesh. Rustic and resourceful, some of these fences and walls had an industrial-strength beauty, while others lent a more whimsical touch. Either way, the message for home gardeners is that imperfection is OK, and, in fact, the more wabi-sabi the better.

A weathered fence set at irregular heights lent an air of whimsy at the gold-winning ‘Through the Looking Glass’ by Stem Landscape Architecture & Design and ID Landscaping and Construction.Credit: Megan Backhouse

Read the land

Despite running for almost 30 years, this year was the first time the show included a garden co-designed by Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung elders. So seamlessly did the Indigenous and native flora, charred branches and rocks meld into this patch of the Carlton Gardens, it looked like they had always been there. And in a sense, they had.

This deceptively understated spread, also designed by Andrew Laidlaw of the Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria and Suzannah Kennett Lister, addressed Indigenous land stewardship and was one of the few displays that actively welcomed visitors inside. Its take-home message was that sometimes you can add more to space by peeling layers back.

Go out on a limb

Even if you’re not inclined to make your garden half-purple and half-silver like Ellen Freeman did, her solar-eclipse-inspired spread, which took out a prize for best use of plant life, was the prompt many of us needed to loosen up with our choices.

“With this garden, I would like to unshackle people from their ideas of what’s achievable in a garden and encourage them to seek inspiration from new sources,” the Holmesglen student wrote in the statement accompanying her gold-winning entry in the ‘Achievable Gardens’ category. Freeman’s two-speed, multi-plant approach had attitude. Way to go.

Ellen Freeman forged her own way with her gold-winning, solar-eclipse-inspired garden.Credit: Megan Backhouse

Care for your soil

Show gardens are, by definition, about what’s going on above ground – but as all gardeners know, it’s what’s going on below that dictates everything. While you can’t actually dig at the Carlton Gardens – every plant in every display is installed over the top – there was much discussion this year of soil health. As if to drive the point home, ‘Through the Looking Glass’ even had a glass panel revealing its different layers of soil and the ecosystems they contain. An idea for school gardens, perhaps?

Hide whatever you don’t like

Finally, for the things visitors didn’t see: rubbish bins, messy compost piles, empty pots, parked cars (well, except for a few particularly pretty ones in the floristry section). This absence really makes a difference. Everyone should go out now and throw out or obscure – with plants, partition walls or whatever structure works for you – all the unattractive stuff that inevitably makes its way into a garden. It will change everything.

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