Last Review: Weed Annihilation (Designing)

Chelsea's Garden

This is my upcoming work by next week or two, which is designing for Chelsea's Garden. Basically here I have a rough sketch of the garden and currently just labeling the garden on what I could use with the empty space as my first step:

If you could see I actually labelled the first ground bed as "Perennial Gardens" which is actually this picture over here..

As I see the garden, I see the two lovely ferns that they

wanted to keep in the garden, that gives a high possibility that

the design for this garden will not just be an ordinary backyard!

It's either going to be a native landscape or an exotic bed, that has

both its benefits and disadvantages:

Native landscape:

+ Naturally tough plants, and high chance of it being non-invasive giving up little cost for management

+ Plants are cheaper in price if bought from stock

+ Drought tolerant - doesn't need any complex irrigation system, or even any irrigation system.

- Not suitable for a family garden (I think!)

Exotic bed:

+ A very eye catching garden, admirable for a place to hang out

+ Most of the plants give fragrance, hence an aromatherapy in the gardens to ease stress

- However expensive!

For this case I'd even done a brief list on the plants supposedly to be planted later based from the plant list on Horticultural Plants, such as:

The Native Landscape

Index/ Name Size / Type Price

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[6.3] Asplenium australasicum ...........................0.5 m Shrub........................................$13.95

[6.6] Cyathea australis..........................................2.0 m Shrub........................................$04.25

[9.4] Banksia prionotes.........................................5.0 m Tree........................................$11.70

Exotic Bed

Index/ Name Size / Type Price

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[4.1] Agave attenuata ...........................................1.0 m Shrub........................................$40.00

[3.5] Haemanthus coccineus.................................0.3 m Shrub........................................$15.00

[9.5] Erythrina xbidwilii .......................................1.0 m Shrub........................................$20.00

The small list above shows how the price does differ a lot as I mention as the highest price of a Native plant is not even as high for the lowest price in Exotic plant. Bear in mind that I haven't done an exact research so this is just an example. For the rest, it's up to Chelsea for the garden she like to choose and plants that she might want to use.

So, I'm currently just an amature horticulturist myself.. However a few more practice like this and I could be a professional horticulturist in no time, wish me luck in my designing and any suggestions are warmly accepted :D

Thx for reading, hope you enjoyed the blog - Justin H Kusnandar

Fifth Review: Website - www.smartgardenwatering.org.au

Watering your garden is an important issue, especially after the 10 long years of drought Australia had experience. We need to conserve water as much as we could and we can also be economical with it for our funds, its two birds with one stone!

So I visited the website: www.smartgardenwatering.org.au

The website calculate how much water tank you should use for your garden and a community website for discussion on other peoples garden, which connects to facebook. I tried using the software provided in the website to calculate the water that is actually required to optimize my veggie plot. Here are the steps when I used it:

1) Inserted the suburb or the place of my garden which is in Burnley, and the website immidiately shows what type of soils is usually used for it (for this case, Burnley is said to use claysoil most of the time which true)

2) Edit the size of my garden, I think it was 4 x 1.5 = 6 square meters

3) Insert the plant type I used which is vegetable and herbs -> vegetables -> Globe artichoke (they don't have my plant in here so i'm just gonna use that for example) and Rosemary (in edible herbs)

4) Edit water usage: "Drip below mulch" and mulch: "pea straw", finally then the conditions..

5) Go back to the water summary and VOILA: it says 184 L/year which is around half a litter a day.

Judging by the result of the website, I might say that it's quite accurate as the veggie plot is small after all so a small amount of watering should be enough :D.

Then go back into my plant area in the website it shows me that the plants require 99 liters in January, but it actually only requires 66 liters. That is a huge difference, the water amount is cut back 1/3 of it! I say this will definitely save water usage and the bills.

Now imagine if everyone is using this website and following the recommendation provided in Australia, we might be able to save liters and liters of water also reduce water restriction for our needs. I have to say this is a very good website, especially for horticulturist as watering and gardens comes hand in hand.

That's all for my Fifth review, thanks for reading along and I seriously just knew that this website was developed by :

What are you waiting for, smart watering today! (like a TV commercial :P)

- Justin H. Kusnandar

Fourth Garden Review: The Princeton

The Princeton

The Princeton is the apartment i'm currently living in on st Kilda Road (don't stalk me, btw!!). For this place, I actually think that the garden looks very nice and neat, something that could direct your attention for a second or two when you're walking by.

The scenery here has a modern touch that's a mixture of both sculptures and the usage of plant design working together, which I think is absolutely brilliant. This is the cause that the modern touch is currently the "In" thing for the cityscape probably, it gives flexibility on using plants even in this concrete, cement and paving wonderland also actually taking advantage of it for a design. Admire the picture below on how the abstract structure going in rows act like "trees" for the grass turf rather than leaving the place plainly, the picture also shows a vice versa effect on how the small tress support the fence paving as an extension.

Here is another example on adding the modern touch in garden beds, instead of filling the whole land with plants requiring high maintenance (so the plant wont overcrowd the place, or ended up looking messy because they grow out of the original design), this design uses rocks and paving to limit the growth of plants on going out of the borders and keeping it neat.

In some ways, the modern touch is an effective design for public cityscape, however it does not work on other places besides that (can you imagine if someone use this in the suburb ? It will look out of place making the garden looks weird instead of unique). So i'm not judging that the modern touch in designing is a good thing, it is really dependent on the area which it will be implemented and so far the cityscape is the best suited for it.

That ends my fourth review, thanks for reading hope you enjoyed it!

- Justin H Kusnandar

Third Garden Review: Roma Botanica Garden

Roma Botanica Garden

I'm pretty sure everyone have passed and seen this place everyday, this is the garden in front of Roma Botanica Cafe, well at least it looks like a garden. Er.... to anyone who happen to like this view, i'm gonna write this with no intention of offense, since it is just my personal opinion. I'm just gonna say that this garden looks BAD and there could be hundreds of ways to improve it.

Here are some reasons why I think it's bad:

1) Notice the garden bed, it looks drastically empty and the plant species used is only two.

2) The garden could be used more for a park for skateboarding or something else, the tree's practically kills that usage. (well except if they are trying to practice riding in zig-zag)

3) There's no object or sculptures that could gain more attraction to help the look of the garden (since the plants aren't eye catching... they should have these objects)

BUT, then again there might be a couple of reasons for them not to improve it. such as:

1) They don't have the fund to improve it

2) It's not their garden, maybe it belongs to the GE Capital building (not sure x_x!)

3) They can't find any good reason on why they should improve the gardens

IF the reasons is 1-2 then I can't actually blame anything for it, however if it's reason number 3 than they really have a wrong idea, because I think by having a good garden view for a business in a cafe, is a good idea. The novelty of sipping a cup of tea or coffee while seeing a flora scenery is a relaxing way for most people, especially for someone who's feeling tired.

One of the ways they could improve is maybe by planting aromatic plants like the plants that belong to Rutaceae family, or maybe by planting succulents. I'm pretty sure there are still a lot of ways that you could think of on how to improve this garden.

That's all for my second review - Justin H Kusnandar