Busy gardeners, new gardeners, four season flowering.

Busy gardeners, new gardeners, four season flowering.

There are several schools of thought when it comes to gardening, beginning a garden from scratch or even just rejuvenating an existing one. Obviously climate and budget will be the prime dictates, these and the amount of time one wishes to give the garden.

Lets today look at a garden which contains a few bulbs for colour during the four seasons and some easy to grow alpines.

Any garden needs a theme, a focal point, something to pull all your planting's together. This can be what you like.

Talking to folks who are new to growing, and we should always remember that the little knowledge we all have to a new gardener, seems daunting; like how can they begin to know all this?

An inner city gardener needs at the minium the following, a good pair of secateurs, a pruning saw, a solid handled steel trowel, forget the cheep ones, buy a solid one, make sure it is happy in your hand, with the right balance for you. Depending on your height, either a long handled shovel as I use or a short handled spade as my wife uses. If you have the space to store it - a good brickies wheel barrow. Failing this a little low trolley like they use in Nurseries so you can put large plastic bowls on for moving sand, soil, pots and the like.

Chemicals. apart from trace elements, and bonemeal, and pelletised manures I personally don't use chemicals. No, not even for snails - after hosing the garden before sunset, I go out and collect and quickly kill the poor things should they be eating more than 5% or so of the yard. I also feed passing birds needing to be feed, these in turn eat a lot of my garden nasties.

This is easy forget planting for the beginner or the busy working person. Spring flowering. Albuca species, shallow planting's Alliums, plant about an inch deep Babiana species, watch these as they can become weedy in mild climates. Camassias, plant two inches deep Dipidax, now called Onixottis triquetum Fressia species Galanthus, for those with a chill factor in winter Ipheions Iris, Dutch Ixias Leucojums Muscarri Oxalis Hypoxis Tritonia Wachendorfia thyrsflora Watsonia.

All of these can be left in the ground and not lifted.

Summer Flowering. Acidanthera Agapanthus, for small gardens, pick a dwarf variety. Alliums Alstromeria Amaryllis Belladonna, called in Australia, naked ladies, shallow plant this. Brunsvigia josophinae, keep dryish over summer. Big bulbs of this are often seen in NSW,