Horticulture enthusiast CHLOE FOSTER is determined to help beginner plant parents master the gardening essentials.
Her new book, The Rookie Gardener, is straightforward, practical, witty, and inspiring. It’s packed with tips and is a know-how to guide to your transformation from complete novice to confident, green-thumbed gardener.
Read below for a project to make an edible screen in your garden.
ABOUT THE BOOK
For readers with absolutely no floriferous idea, the book begins by explaining what a plant actually is. Chapters are set out in the order that you would do things in the garden – because a thorough grounding in the what, why and how of your bit of soil is the first and most important step towards imagining and creating something that perfectly suits you and your needs. To round out your rookie understanding, there are step-by-step projects, horticultural tidbits, suggestions for rabbit-hole reading, checklists, garden hacks and special features (with the generous inclusion of how to grow succulents, the author’s most hated plant).
As Chloe gently guides you through making your garden, and living in it, she provides insights into growing your own food, creating habitat, treading lightly on the earth (dig out that weed, don’t spray it!), and gardening in size-challenged spaces – even if that’s just a bookshelf in your lounge room.
An illustrated plant directory, giving recommendations for particular spots and styles, makes choosing the right plant for the right place a cinch – the perfect way to send you off on your solo gardening expedition, loaded with all the knowledge, skills and confidence you need.
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Project: bobbing for apples
Create a green screen in an area that needs a) some life in it and b) screening from nosy neighbours. Keep it ornamental or make it edible!
This project can be created using small to medium-sized plants that are suited for hedging, such as lilly pilly (Acmena smithii), blueberry ash (Elaeocarpus reticulatus), Portugese laurel (Prunus lusitanica) or mock orange (Murraya paniculata).
Here, we’re going to use apple trees to make an edible screen. The foliage will change colour in autumn, opening the area up to let sunlight in during those cold months, and provide yummy fruit to snack on.
Thankfully, humans have been breeding apple trees for yonks. And we’ve created a number of smaller growing varieties perfect for small gardens, large containers and narrow spaces. Dwarf and column-shaped varieties are what works for this project. There are specific column apple varieties: ‘Bolero’, ‘Pom Pink’, ‘Charlotte’, ‘Cumulus’, ‘Harmony’, ‘Herald’, ‘Ballerina’, ‘Flamenco’, ‘Waltz’, ‘Dita’.
(Dwarf varieties of apple and pear also work, but will need a bit more pruning to maintain their narrow shape. And it gets better: the ‘Crimson Rocket’ peach is a column-shaped, dwarf tree bred for these smaller, narrow spaces as well.)
In this project we’re going to plant two trees in each 1 metre long trough planter; we’ve used three planters in total for this space. Edible or ornamental? There are a number of combinations you could make here. depending on your vibe:
Control freak/fan of sleek: put the same variety of plant in all containers. This is pretty useless for fruit tree pollination (yield will be compromised), but okay for ornamentals.
Neat but likes variety: two varieties alternating in the containers. This is good for fruit tree pollination as long as the varieties are pollinating partners.
Fast and loose: six different varieties across the planters. A pollination swingers party for edibles and ornamentals.
Faster and looser: a mixture of edible and ornamental plants across the planters. Also a pollination party!
In my garden, I’m going with a form of fast and loose as I want to have a range of apple trees that will produce fruit at different times, help pollinate each other and consequently extend the fruiting season. Plus peaches for summer.
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Gather
Three 1 metre long rectangular troughs
Four varieties of column apple, 2 column peach
Six or seven 30 litre bags of top-tier potting mix for each trough
Slow-release citrus and fruit fertiliser
How to
Place troughs where they will stay (you don’t want to be moving them when they are full of soil!) and sit them on some sort of pot feet, such as decking offcuts.
Fill with potting mix so top of root ball will sit 2 cm below top of the trough.
Gently place plants in position, evenly spaced in the pot: in a metre-long trough, each plant trunk should be 25 cm from one end.
Sprinkle slow release citrus and fruit fertiliser around the base of plants and gently fill the spaces with more potting mix, to bring it up to 1 cm below the pot edge.
Water in well, topping up any potting mix that has sunk down.
Optional: top troughs with pea straw or wood mulch to minimise water loss, and for aesthetics, over summer.
Fortune telling: The plants you put in your containers will likely need root pruning a few years down the track. Water well the night before. Spread a tarp alongside the pot and, with a friend, tip the container onto its side. Lever out the plants, follow the root pruning instructions on page 238 and saw off matted, twisted or curling roots. Tip the container back upright and repeat steps 3 to 5, above.
May I offer you a tidbit?
If you’re potting up deciduous fruit trees before winter there’s no need to fertilise; whatever is in the potting mix will suffice. Feed them in spring when they start actively growing. This can be done for ornamentals too.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chloe Foster began her horticultural career working in wholesale and retail nurseries, before moving into high-profile horticultural positions with Melbourne Zoo and Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria, specialising in the cultivation of hard-to-grow species.
A garden designer and consultant, she also teaches Horticulture at Melbourne Polytechnic.
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