Winter: Is Your Garden Sad?

While winter seems to be a sad time in the garden, with many summer annuals spent and brown, there are other things that can also make your garden look sad. And they are worse because if your garden looks sad in other seasons, you will likely be the odd one out. At least in the winter, everyone has a garden that looks past its best, yet it can retain enough subtle colour to make it look acceptable if not beautiful.

Once you’ve pulled out those dead flowers and generally tidied up, raked, mulched and fertilised, the winter garden will still look good. You only have to make sure you have some winter-flowering plants, or those that give winter foliage colour and you’ll be set.

A sad garden at other times needs immediate attention to find out the cause. It could simply be that your soil is sandy. A sandy soil allows all the fertiliser you lavish on it to sink right through to the lower water tables. Having nutrients in this ground water impacts negatively on the environment. But it is not impossible to garden in an environmentally sound way, saving the water table from harm and making your sandy soil garden look happy instead of sad.

The soil needs to be built up with lots of the correct type of humus; and the type of plants chosen need to be suited to sandy soil. In fact, Australian natives will thrive in sandy soil, although a little help will get them going faster and better. If you are not sure what other plants will grow in your sandy soil, consulting a professional would be a wise move.

The professional gardener will be able to come and inspect your particular garden site and advise you on what is needed for soil stability, windbreaks, plant type and how to create a microclimate that will favour the plants you like. Once you know exactly what you need, you can go ahead and do it all yourself, or ask your gardener for help.

Having a professional gardener may seem like a luxury to some, but really it is an investment. When you think of the money spent on plants, tools and all the other associated costs - not to mention the time and energy involved - it may be cheaper to have someone do it all for you. Then you won’t have to buy all those extra tools and equipment. And your garden will be transformed from a sad one to a happy garden in no time flat.