Fremantle Garden
Episode: #28 8/12/07
Presenter: Neville Passmore
Let me walk you around a 99 year-old Fremantle garden that has undergone a massive change in 10 years since it was purchased by its current owners. There are some great lessons here when creating a lifestyle garden in a difficult location.
The Garden sits on the top of a hill of capstone that is hardened limestone. It is so hard that you can’t dig, and it is so limey that if you want to have any sort of garden at all, you have to bring in a truck load of compost. Lesson two, Neville explains the value of having a veranda.
Veranda’s are like a hat for your house, creating shade all around they drop the internal temperature dramatically during summer, and it is also an ideal living area for entertaining through summer evenings.
The house doesn’t allow storm water drains to be built, so what you can do is run a few chains in a cluster from the gutter down into an ornamental pot and then take that water off through perforated pipes into the garden, so the garden gets the benefit of all that rain.
French doors face the Indian Ocean, allowing the famous ‘Fremantle Doctor’, the sea breeze, to cool the house.
Trial and try again has been the theme of planting and the winners have been those tough reliable including the Weeping Mulberry (Morus alba ‘Pendula’), a cascading feature tree with edible summer fruits, fruiting grape vines that give shade as well as more edible summer fruits, and Seaside Daisy (Erigeron karvinskianus) that you could grow on rock, which is exactly what it is doing in this garden. Plus there is the exquisitely scented Star Jasmine. Clever gardens like the one Neville visits have the beauty to inspire any prospective gardener.
For more information on gardens open in your area please visit the Open Garden Scheme website: www.opengarden.org.au
Presenter: Neville Passmore
Let me walk you around a 99 year-old Fremantle garden that has undergone a massive change in 10 years since it was purchased by its current owners. There are some great lessons here when creating a lifestyle garden in a difficult location.
The Garden sits on the top of a hill of capstone that is hardened limestone. It is so hard that you can’t dig, and it is so limey that if you want to have any sort of garden at all, you have to bring in a truck load of compost. Lesson two, Neville explains the value of having a veranda.
Veranda’s are like a hat for your house, creating shade all around they drop the internal temperature dramatically during summer, and it is also an ideal living area for entertaining through summer evenings.
The house doesn’t allow storm water drains to be built, so what you can do is run a few chains in a cluster from the gutter down into an ornamental pot and then take that water off through perforated pipes into the garden, so the garden gets the benefit of all that rain.
French doors face the Indian Ocean, allowing the famous ‘Fremantle Doctor’, the sea breeze, to cool the house.
Trial and try again has been the theme of planting and the winners have been those tough reliable including the Weeping Mulberry (Morus alba ‘Pendula’), a cascading feature tree with edible summer fruits, fruiting grape vines that give shade as well as more edible summer fruits, and Seaside Daisy (Erigeron karvinskianus) that you could grow on rock, which is exactly what it is doing in this garden. Plus there is the exquisitely scented Star Jasmine. Clever gardens like the one Neville visits have the beauty to inspire any prospective gardener.
For more information on gardens open in your area please visit the Open Garden Scheme website: www.opengarden.org.au
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