I chose things that are hardy and easy to grow, so they’re acceptable to lots of people. For instance, if you’re fixing up a garden to sell, you’ll find that a 
The No. 1 selling plant in Melbourne without doubt is your 
Now we’ve also included probably the bestselling plant just about in the whole nursery at the moment. It’s the 
Like my 3ft Iceberg Roses – beautiful strong roses. You could pay around 50 or 60 bucks elsewhere but ours are around $30. Our Iceberg Roses, tend to turn over quickly which is good because sometimes you’ll go into a nursery and their Icebergs will have black spot and the leaves will be dropping off and they’ll be looking a bit sad because they’ve been sitting there for six months.
Our Standard Icebergs are lucky to sit there for three days. They come in fresh from a grower and are still growing. That’s true for a lot of our stock. You get great value for money because a lot of our stuff only sits in the nursery for 3 or 4 days from the time we bring it until the time it sells.
Now when it comes to screening and flowering plants, probably my favourite is Escallonia. It comes in two varieties. Escallonia Iveyi and Escallonia Macrantha. Now, what I like about both of these is that they flower for 5, 6 months of the year. So really, really long flowering. They’re extremely hardy and very, very fast growing.
But probably the best value for money screen I’ve got at the moment is the Fairy Magnolia, which at most nurseries you’ll find them very, very expensive. But I’ve got Fairy Magnolias, 2.5 – 3 foot tall for 20 bucks.
Now my daughter’s got a Fairy Magnolia hedge around her house and when it’s in flower, people come and knock on the door and say, what’s that amazing hedge you’ve got there? It’s the only hedge I know that actually brings people in off the street. She’s got a beautiful little white wooden cottage with this fabulous, Fairy Magnolia that’s just covered in thousands of white fragrant flowers in springtime. So Fairy Magnolia is very classy, beautiful, dark green, it’s lovely and dense, trims up easy and is very easy to grow and one of the best deals in my Garden Essentials. And every springtime, it gives you this amazing show of white fragrant flowers.
Now how you can make the most of my Garden Essentials range is that if you’re got a garden project that you’re struggling with working out what to plant in it, just sit down with me in a Free Garden Design session and I’ll help you work it out. I’ll ask you questions like – What do you want to achieve here? And you’ll say – I want it bushy or I want to screen out the neighbours or I need a bit of colour or I need low maintenance.
And then having done that, I’ll start to work out some garden situations for you. Like do you need just a little garden bed in front of the factory or something like that. Then you don’t want a feature tree. In fact you might just need a little bit of space. With a feature tree you need to have a lawn that you could put it in the middle of, or a nice big wide garden bed. Nothing looks worse than a feature tree wedged up hard against the fence. So if you’ve only got a narrow garden bed along a fence, scrap the idea of the feature tree.
So the first thing you might think about, if you have the room, is the feature tree and then come down and have what I would call your sub feature, which is your bush, and that would be the second thing that you would look at. But then I’d ask you to think about the style or what you want.
So what we’ve got is a section for feature plants and a section for flowering plants. So if you want to fill your garden with colour, you go to the flowering plants where you’ll find lots of good flowering plants there.
So what I did was put a giant Liriope in there which is great where you want a tall lush grass and that’s really good in a bit of a shady spot which has morning sun or afternoon shade. And the other one I included was El Marco. Now El Marco is very interesting because not everybody likes the flowers on Liriopes but El Marco is purely a foliage plant, no flowers. So the great thing about El Marco is that it grows very, very even it’s all grown from division, not from seed because they don’t flower. But anyway, El Marco only grows about 60 cm high with very even beautiful fine foliage so I chose that one.
Now then you’ve got your tall hedges and screens. So if you’ve got 2-storey units or apartments being built next door and someone’s gonna be peeking into your pool you’ll need a tall hedge or screens. Well we cater for that in Garden Essentials too. So to screen somebody off with a beautiful thick hedge with a good bit of height in it you can’t go wrong with our Ficus hillii Flash. It’s about 1.5 to 1.6 metres high, that’s five foot or so tall. They can be over $100 but in Garden Essentials you’ll find them around $80 – so that’s really good.
Then one of the best deals we have and one of the fastest ways to block people out, particularly if you’ve got a big block or a country property, it’s your Leighton Green Cypress. We’ve got them at over a metre tall for 30 bucks in a 10 inch pot.
Another thing that people are looking for all the time is your straight and narrow Lily Pilly and they can cost a fortune around the place. We’ve got the straight and narrow Lily Pilly for $15 each if you buy a dozen. It’s a special variety that grows compact. It doesn’t get too wide, it’s quite narrow and they grow sort of narrow and tall and straight.
Then we’ve got grasses and strappy plants. So if you are looking for that modern kind of low maintenance garden with a bit of colour with kind of a funky sort of look we’ve got those there too.
Then we’ve got foliage and accent plants, including things like your Tractor Seat plants.
And then we’ve got climbers and other things to cover the wall. Also ground covers, to put underneath trees and bushes and things like that. And in all of these varieties we’ve chosen the ones that are easy and hardy and easy to grow.
Now we’ve also got all sorts of deals on lemon trees in Garden Essentials. You’ll find probably some of the best deals in Melbourne. We’ve got 4.5 foot tall, either a Eureka or a Lisbon Lemon for $50. And if you’re in a nice mild coastal spot, the Eureka’s fabulous. If you’re in a harsher spot, like say you’re out in Sunbury, you’ll find you’ll do really well with a Lisbon. So again I like to give people a choice of the two, but they’re both fantastic. And these are 4 foot tall. In some nurseries you’ll pay over a hundred bucks for something that’s 4 foot tall. Ours are all top row, beautiful quality, really, really top shelf stuff.
Another of the really good things is my Garden Essentials is a nice grafted red Weeping Maple. Now in most nurseries these days it is going to set you back a couple of hundred bucks. But I’m proud to say my grower gave me a real good deal and I was able to get a nice grafted Inaba Shidare, which is my favourite red Weeping Maple for 120 bucks. Now don’t forget when you plant them to dig a nice big hole and mix in a bit of potting mix. You’ve got to be a little bit careful, but it’s the hardiest and best of all the Weeping Maples. And you’ll find that there’d be very few nurseries in Melbourne where you could get a top quality Maple for just under $200.
Oh, one of the things I was going to mention is Hydrangeas. Now Hydrangeas everywhere are costing 15, 19 21 bucks. Our Hydrangeas are 50cm tall and in the Garden Essentials, the most popular height range here is your white ball Hydrangeas that has a lovely big white ball on top and the second most popular is the one that has a lovely big pink ball on top. And we call these a ball Hydrangea or a Macrophylla Hydrangea. They’re in our Garden Essentials for around 10 bucks.
Now a great thing about our Garden Essentials range is that we deliver over most parts of Victoria – the highly populated parts like out to Bendigo and Shepparton and out to Taralgon and down to Geelong. We deliver to most of those parts and all through the Melbourne Metro area. We do it all for free delivery when you spend over 300 bucks.
So if you’re putting together a project, you can just go to Garden Essentials section on our website. What’s great is you find there’s not an enormous list to go through. Everything there is great value for money, and they’re the sort of things that you can use without going through too many lists and that’ll help you put a great garden together without spending too much money.
Now remember if you go the Garden Essentials and you still need help, just ring up, get my staff to help or come in and get one of our Free Garden Designs. Say a 20 minute one, which is enough to do a normal front garden, you pay 50 bucks up front and then if you spend over $250 on your plants, you get it for free.
