The Garden Gurus

Nice book from 2003 about making your garden sustainable. perfect for Perth, Adelaide, and Melbourne.

The authors live in Perth and write about the Perth environment. Perth has what is described in Australia as a Mediterranean climate, hot dry summers and cool wet winters. Melbourne and Adelaide have the same climate. Hobart is to far south and is cool in summer. Sydney and all points north have a long wet spring with the rain often running months into summer, producing too much humidity for many of the plants recommended by the Garden Gurus.

2003 was before the big drought on the eastern coast of Australia, the drought blamed on global warming despite Australia having a bigger longer drought a hundred years earlier, the drought that introduced permanent water restrictions making a lot of the Garden Guru ideas no longer legal in many Australian cities.

95 million years ago Australia finally split from Antarctica, letting cold water circulate around Antarctica, freezing Antarctica, and making a lot of potential rain miss Australia. Australia became a hot dry land. The last 200 years of weather in Australia is believed to be unusually wet compared to what Australia was for tens of thousands of years before that. We have to plan for hot dry conditions and not try to emulate cool wet English gardens.

Small differences in the rainfall patterns between Perth and Sydney make a big difference to what works in our gardens. A Sydney version of the Garden Gurus book would be a good choice for people in Sydney.

Melbourne has a similar climate to Perth and, like Sydney, now has tight restrictions on water usage, too tight for some of the ideas in the garden Gurus book. You could follow the advice in the Garden Gurus book if you have very large rainwater tanks that fill up in Winter.

A lot of the plant choices presented in the book will die from fungus in the humidity of Sydney unless you continually spray with chemicals. Continually spraying with chemicals defeats the purpose of a low maintenance garden.

Some of the recommended plants are weeds when used outside their home state. Some of the pictures show plants that have varieties that are weeds and you have to carefully read the labels to get a safe variety. I suggest you ask your local council for recommendations. Buy locally from a garden centre where they know local conditions and requirements. As an example in Sydney, lots of places sell plants for ponds that are noxious weeds destroying Sydney rivers.

Authors:
Trevor Cochrane
Neville Passmore

Publishers: The Garden Gurus
9 Gay Street, Dianella WA 6059
www.thegardengurus.com