WRITING about Michael McCoy's recent design symposium I found my brain buzzing again with the ideas it provoked.
I kept returning to the sub-title of future directions.
It's in a garden's nature to grow and change and gardeners need to think of the long term. What was I doing to take mine into the future?
Along with the need to factor in a hotter, drier climate, three ideas keep recurring to me.
Firstly, the garden is an enchanted forest that you walk through, not a stage set that you look at. It needs to beckon you in and invite exploration.
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Secondly, o frabjous day, gaps don't matter in a dry garden.
Thirdly, leading from this, there's no need to struggle with flowering perennials if they don't like your climate. Although they're fantastic gap fillers, too often they demand summer irrigation.
It's better to focus on woody plants.
If the sight of a patch of bare mulch or gravel really offends you, you can always add succulents, self-seeding annuals and grasses.
I love the idea of being enveloped in a garden, lost among the plants.
This isn't as hard to achieve as it sounds.
Our front garden as seen from the verandah was originally a lawn framed by curved beds, overlooking paddocks.
Enlarging the beds and making paths to wind through them let us get in among the plants, it was as simple as that.
Pruning is another way of creating this feel.
It's easy to remove lower branches of shrubs so you can walk under them, also to eliminate eye-level material so that you can glimpse another part of the garden.
Multi-stemmed native trees (mallees) do this job equally well, creating screens to look through and overhead canopies to walk beneath.
When it comes to gaps between plants, the outback is a brilliant example of their beauty.
Endless and varied shapes, textures and colours dot the red earth and you have no feeling of any need for them to spread and join together.
They are eye catching as they are, and you can walk among them for ever and enjoy their individuality.
Outback plants are beautiful too among rocks and small pools, as in the gullies of Uluru and the Olgas in the Red Centre, and Purnululu in the Kimberley.
Again, achieving this sort of effect isn't hard, even without outback plants which often have extremely specific soil, sunlight and drainage requirements and would probably look wrong anyway.
But nurseries offer a vast range of easy and interesting woody plants, both native and exotic, whether you live on the coast, highland or inland.
Nor do you need that many, try instead using a few in different ways: let some grow up and out, keep others tightly clipped.
Have fun - unleash your inner artist.
If it doesn't work, it doesn't matter.
There's always next year.
Sculptures in the Garden is on again this November 6-21 and includes sculpture and art in the garden of Rosby Vineyard, Strikes Lane, Eurundereree, Mudgee.
COVID-safe guidelines apply, proof of full vaccination required, limited daily numbers, bookings essential.
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