I love this idea and what it might achieve in helping people see that they too could create their own garden. There are demonstrations on how to set up edible gardens, tours of some of the local community gardens that exist in the New York area and classes for families to create their own vegetable garden.

This could be one facet of gardening that would help ensure the success of our annual gardening shows but, correct me if I'm wrong, it doesn't seem to exist much.

I'd love to know what might be happening in your area that celebrates edible gardens, if it happens at all.

In fact, your boss actually gives you time to tend to your plants and understands when the call of nature...not that call...beckons and requires your immediate attention. Furthermore, they're happy to pitch in a little time when you need to move them all into the sunlight and are happy to ditch their important client meeting to offer a hand when your plants need watering.

And then your alarm goes off...and it's time to get ready for work. That dream was just that - a dream.

For the gardener who can't bear to be far away from plants and would rather spend each and every day in the garden it is possible to marry both. Your work, the necessary evil that keeps your wallet full so that you can continue to expand your garden hobby, is still very important and can't take second place to your office plants - but they can both work together.

Caring for your Office Plants

Tending your indoor office plants during business hours probably isn't a good idea if you're trying to keep the boss happy. However, there's nothing to stop you coming into work early or leaving later so that you can take care of your plants. Even lunch hours, morning tea breaks and the justified non-smoko "smoko" are good times to get in a little extra care and maintenance.

But, if you really want to keep your boss on the right side of the happiness ledger why not maintain a plant in their office too? Explain that her plant has air-purifying qualities and she'll truly appreciate your thoughtfulness - unless, of course, she assumes that you think she stinks and then takes offence!

You will need this time to take care of your office plants and in order to keep your boss happy, gardening chores shouldn't happen during work time. If need be, take a plant home overnight - or over the weekend - to repot, remove scale and fertilise. Then bring it back in the morning and continue the process with each of your office plants.

Another helpful tip may be restricting the amount of plants that adorn your office. Too many and you'll never see a lunch-break again while just the odd one or two may bore you to tears. Work it out with your boss to keep a happy medium.

So, rather than let another winter pass by without anything to show for it, little M. (my youngest daughter) and I have been planting some seeds and seedlings hope to cash in on this wonderful rain we've been getting.

The soil is completely ordinary, at best, and previously we've done nothing to nurture it - the aquaponics setup doesn't require soil. So, in some small spots I've amended it with the small amount of compost that I had left hoping to improve the nutrient levels at least a little.

In this small bed we've planted half a dozen brussell sprouts and broccoli seedlings which have now doubled in size. However, one or two have become the "taste sensation of the month" for a few voracious snails.

In the area where the soil is not good and I didn't have any compost spare I planted broad beans and sugar snap peas. Both of these should contribute some nitrogen back into the soil and with a little amending make it a good plot for my spring solanums.

The peas and beans are humming along nicely and with fortnightly feeds of fish emulsion should produce quite well.

The great thing about this project is that little M. doesn't realise that these veggies will become part of her staple diet in the spring: broad beans, broccoli and brussel sprouts - not usually on a 6 year olds menu of choice. ;-)

But, on so many levels it makes sense. Firstly there's the recycling component: you will need at least 4 tyres to grow potatoes in which accounts for at least 2-3 years of driving value. Then, there's the space issue: you can grow far more potatoes per square metre than growing them in the soil. Plus, vertical gardening is always an added bonus because it makes use of the space above the ground which is often wasted.

Finally, when it comes time to harvest your spuds it's just a matter of pulling off the tyres and letting the potatoes fall out - much easier than breaking your back digging them up.

So, how do you grow potatoes in a tyre stack?

The first step is to source some old tyres. One option is to head to your local refuse site and pick up a few that are already taking up landfill. However, these are usually quite dirty and can often have spiders or other creepy-crawlies inhabiting them. Instead, I prefer to visit a local tyre dealership and request some of their waste tyres. These have come off vehicles and are waiting to go the refuse site but are usually quite clean and much easier to deal with. Plus, the tyre store will be very happy to part with them because they save dump fees.

When picking your tyres try and source ones that are the same size. This will make it easier for stacking and keep your stack in a uniform shape.

Step One

Don't throw out those inner rings as they can be very useful too. One single cut from inside to outside can turn this surplus rubber into a great mulch collar for new trees and shrubs and they can easily be stored hanging flat in your garden shed when not in use.

Step Two

Step Three

The one trick here is not to cover the vine totally but to always leave a few leaves sticking out. If you do cover it, the vine will begin to rot and you will lose your spuds. It's time to harvest your potatoes when the vine begins to brown and die down. Then you can start pulling the stack apart and gleaning your fresh potatoes.

Remember to keep some for next years planting and store these in a dry, dark spot. The rest can be washed and then stored in your pantry to impress, and feed, your family.

Most gardeners tend to find plants that they want to grow and then add them to their garden. Then, an assortment of pests seem to turn up as though someone's put on a buffet and the only way they leave is when they're carried out in the garbage - after a decent spray.

Year after year the problems occur and the gardener just looks for ways to better manage the pests. They start with chemical sprays but then realise that this can't be doing the environment any benefit, so they turn to organic pesticides as an alternative. Needless to say, many organic pesticides contain chemicals anyway - detergents, soap flakes, bi-carb soda and a plethora of other acids or alkalis.

Did we ever stop to think that maybe these things weren't good for our garden whether we made them ourselves or bought them already pre-mixed in a convenient spray? Probably not. In fact, we possibly thought we were doing the environment a good turn.

But, when we stop and think about what we're doing we realise that any type of pesticide, organic or chemical, is harmful - it just depends how harmful!

It's a philosophical paradigm really. On the one hand you get to grow anything you want but have to deal with the pests that those plants attract. While on the other your plant choices are a little more limited but you don't lose precious gardening time trying to combat the little critters. Yet the permaculturalist will argue that there's a third option - companion planting.

To be honest, my garden's not completely pest-free - but it is pretty close. I still have a few roses that the aphids love but the ladybugs keep them under control. Then there's the sowbugs that like to feast on my new seedlings and the snails are never far from their bromeliad habitat. But moths, caterpillars, grasshoppers and crickets are kept at bay from the birds that I try to attract.

So, before you go mixing up a batch of organic pesticide take a moment to consider why you need it all. If it's because you can't find an alternative to keep the pests at bay then find some other plants to grow instead. It will be far more beneficial for your garden environment and the world's environment at large.

Where does this leave the nursery garden? Will it need to evolve further than it already has or will attitudes and perceptions change back to it as time goes by?

From an observing viewpoint, it's been interesting to watch how the financial crisis, climate change and eating habits have led a revival, of sorts, back to the nurseries and garden centres. Where nurseries seemed to be closing down every other year a jolt in the public's persona has occurred and they're starting to spring up again.

But, I have a hunch that this is only temporary and that once we're back on our feet again we'll forget the wisdom of our forefathers and seek convenience above all else. And this is where the question of the nursery garden's future raises its head again.

As a gardener the question needs to come back to us, in some ways. We need to reconcile whether nursery gardening has a future in our purchasing habits and whether it will in years to come. If it does then how will this transpire? If not, then what will replace it and where will we source our plants?

As already mentioned there are many avenues to source plant specimens and gardening resources - the nursery garden is just one in the mix.

Yet all of the current options have some downfall. They're all convenient in their own way: online and mail-order purchases can be organised from the comfort of your own home while nursery gardening plants can be sourced immediately and planted the same day. And this is probably the one factor that separates - and may even secure the future of - gardening centres.

We've often extolled the virtues of nursery gardeners for their advice but in this age of information overload advice is cheap and easy to secure. And who hasn't been to a garden centre where they were given tips by some teenager working weekends for a few bucks!

So, while nursery gardening may be the most convenient in terms of being able to view the plant before you buy and being able to plant the same day, its major downfall is the limited variety they can offer - especially compared to specialist mail-order companies. It's just not feasible for garden centres to stock EVERY plant, nor every variety.

Gardeners who are keen to experiment want more than the mass petunias, fashionable grasses and boring foliage plants. Yet those who are happy with these offerings may only be so for a short time before they start questioning the validity of growing a garden at all.

And here is the conundrum: is nursery gardening contributing to the fact that few are taking up the hobby? Big box nursery centres have opted for efficiency over variety and dumbed-down the gardeners creativity in the process. Furthermore, their efficiencies have swallowed up all the garden nurseries that actually offered local specialist advice and a variety of plant specimens.

So, how can nursery gardening operate within the current climate and remain for future generations? IMHO I think they need to nail the delivery and variety aspect. They don't need to stock every plant but they should stock a vast array. As an example, the nursery doesn't need to stock every rose possible but they should be able to source it for the customer within 24-48 hours. This requires far more collaboration between nurseries - especially specialist nurseries - so that they can all compete. Being able to source a customers order in the same time as they could do it online - or quicker - is the key.

Customers will return to the one source if that avenue can deliver quickly and still offer the variety they seek. These are the two keys to the future of nursery gardening.

Needless to say, guys who fish also talk. One of my fish-story-swapping-mates decided that I needed a fishing almanac and swore that it had helped him immeasurably and that I needed one too. Not wanting to miss out on the abundance that awaited me I made sure I picked up the latest copy with my next tackle order.

It was completely fascinating. High tides, low tides, full moons, no moons and the predictive "best" time to place a rod in the water. It even told you when to stay at home and put your feet up for the fishing that day was going to be ordinary at best.

As a newbie who had just discovered some ancient key I studied it dutifully. If the almanac showed that it was a bad day, I'd stay at home. If it were good, you would find me on the end of a rod somewhere facing into the ocean.

The question you're begging to ask is, "Did it work?" Yes, and no. Sometimes the predictions were right and sometimes they were wrong. Sometimes the fish weren't biting even when all the stars were aligned properly, my tongue was held the correct way and the moon couldn't have got any bigger. I even ventured out on a few of those "bad days" and caught a bundle.

So, do almanacs work then or are they just 'baloney'?

In a strict sense of what an almanac is, it is merely a forecast of prevailing conditions. Our study of the moon phases, tides, sunrises and sets and planetary movements has led us to understand some of the basic concepts of creation and an ordered universe that is fairly predictable. These events have helped us predict the weather, fishing times, plant growing conditions and even "presumably" relationship cycles.

However, an almanac is really just a best guess of what these events may affect. It's like looking on the horizon and seeing a rain cloud, expecting rain, and then finding that it dissipates before it reaches you. We can make assumptions of what may occur from these events but it's not pure science. Heck, the weather guy has a tough job forecasting what tomorrow may bring let alone what will happen over the next twelve months.

While a farmer's almanac may seem like the most crucial piece of gardening hardware it really is no better than a weathervane on your roof, a barometer in the shed and a calendar with the phases of the moon dispayed upon it.

I know that some gardeners swear by these almanacs but I'm sure if you were to ask them to show you a record of where they worked and didn't it would show that the almanac was not completely infallible. So, are they worth it? I think they have their place just as much as watching the weather guy try and explain his forecasts helps us plan our todays and tomorrows. But, I wouldn't let them control what I do, and don't do, in the garden.

The first thing to consider in selecting plants for your toilet is that unless you have an outdoor bathroom garden your choices are limited to plants that grow indoors. Obviously this rules out a heap of plant options but it still allows some diversity in your selection making process.

Air-Purifying Plants

We all know how heavy the air can become around the toilet so rather than reach for a can of so-called "air-freshener" here are some options that can ease the situation more environmentally. Some of these featured on NASA's list of plants that they use in the International Space Station. You can see the rest of the list here.

1. Draceana Marginata

2. Sansevieria laurentii

3. Spathiphyllum (Peace Lily)

4. Chrysanthemum x morifolium

Odour-Eating Plants

With heavy air usually comes some fairly ordinary odours and while the plants above are on continual duty filtering the air quality you may want to employ the uses of some of these plants when they flower to remove any unwanted smells - and I'm guessing they're all unwanted.

5. Hoya bilobata

6. Senecio rowleyanus - (String of beads)

7. Jasminum polyanthum

8. Dendrobium miltassia

Plants for the Toilet that Just Look Good

So you've now positioned an air-purifying plant, an odour-eating masker but the toilet's lacking in some colour and beauty. Here's where these plants come in,

9. Gerbera Daisies

10. Parlour palm

Yet, pushing their way through the top soil and the layer of humus that still covers the garden beds are the odd mushroom or toadstool. The first rains of the year have brought them to life and they are enjoying the coolness of the days and nights.

While this is all exciting, and will certainly add some diversity to the evening meal from time to time, these mushrooms can't be counted upon to produce regularly. One day they're in abundance while the next they've succumbed to the extreme weather conditions and have begun to wilt or even departed absurdly from the planet altogether.

For this reason mushroom kits have become so popular. As gardeners we want to grow our own produce, not buy it from the store so a mushroom kit is like a half-way measure. Unfortunately, mushroom spores can't be sold in packets alongside vegetable seeds so the kit allows us to buy them in a semi-unprocessed state.

How to grow mushroom kits

Most mushroom kits are comprised of a box, some growing medium (compost), mycellium spores, and some peat moss casing. Once the kit is opened, remove the peat moss bag and lightly pour over the compost covering the mycellium. Then with a fork or some other instrument, scarify the surface to enable the spores to grow.

Mushroom kits need to be kept at a constant low temperature 15-25°C (60-78°F) but not necessarily in the dark - provided they are kept away from direct sunlight. If the room temperature shifts above or below this range your mushrooms won't grow and your kit may struggle to produce at all.

Once you've started your mushroom kit - this can be delayed for a few weeks but not wise to hold off any longer than this - you will start to produce mushrooms within 7-10 days. Almost half (50%) of your fruit will be produced in this first yield with subsequent production slowing with each harvest until eventually the kit stops producing altogether.

In most cases, once this kit has expired there is nothing more that you can do with it except toss the growing medium into the compost heap. If you have access to more mycellium spores then it is possible to continue growing more of these mushrooms provided the peat moss casing is replaced and the compost medium is still moist.

If you're like me then discovering that mushroom kits now offer more than just white button mushies is quite a boon. Shiitake, Portobello, Enoki and many other varieties are now making their way into the marketplace as gardeners start to experiment with these diverse fungi.

Who knows, maybe one day they will offer packetted mycellium alongside the vegetable seed racks.

I'm not big on needles for any reason and while I like to consider myself "manly" enough to handle most things I become a blubbering mess when a nurse presents a needle aiming to cast it into one of my appendages. Maybe, it's just because I'm allergic to PAIN.

If there were one disease that was most likely to bring down a gardener, Tetanus would have to be it. This is because tetanus occurs from a bacteria, Clostridium tetani, found in the soil. The bacteria can also be found in dust and animal manures.

Tetanus can infect an open wound and after an incubation period of between 3 days to 3 weeks it can produce serious health problems, and potentially become fatal. While this is rare, possibly only 100 deaths per annum throughout the western world, it's also completely preventable.

Most adults receive their final injections when they're between 15-17 years of age and are then supposed to receive a booster every 10 years. Hands up who's had one since they were 17? I'm guessing, if you're anything like me, it's probably one of those things that are still sitting on the TO-DO list and you have to blow the dust off every once in awhile to read it properly.

The reason this disease is a silent killer is because it is often associated with standing on rusty nails or cutting yourself with any corroded metal object. However, all it takes is for an open wound on your hand or other part of your body to come in contact with some contaminated soil and the infection has already commenced.

In my "manly" state, I'm not likely to do anything about this and continue gardening as though nothing happened. The symptoms such as breathing difficulties and muscle tightness could be argued away as "old age" until the more dastardly problems like lockjaw and violent muscle spasms creep in and by then it's probably becoming too late.

While this may sound a little scary - and it is - a tetanus booster every 10 years innoculates any gardener from this disease. And who's scared of a little pin-prick every ten years, huh?

In this great article by Roger Marshall titled "The five stages of gardening", Marshall draws some very close links to the stages we all go through. Here's the stages, according to Roger;

Stage 1 - The Novice Gardener
At this stage you turn your yard into lawn and double-dig a vegetable patch using a garden fork, vowing to turn vegan and be fit all your life. You mow the lawn with a reel push mower because you want to stay fit. You let deer and wild animals take their share of your produce, because they have to eat, too. The newly planted privet hedge is only two feet high.

Stage 2 - The Adolescent Gardener
Stage two comes when you realize that mowing a lawn is hard work and needs to be done weekly so you buy a walk behind power mower. To cut down on mowing time you add a flower bed or two and mulch them heavily. After a year or two, all you do is refresh the mulch in spring. Your vegetable garden has expanded to include a cold frame to help you get crops in colder weather. By this time you've read Eliot Coleman and tried to figure out how to grow year round in Rhode Island. Your garden is now protected with a deer fence and your flowers get sprayed with Deer Off. The privet hedge is now four feet high and very thick.

Stage 3 - The Maturing Gardener
Stage three comes when you want to go on vacation and realize that your yard takes up way too much time, or when your job becomes all consuming and you are working in the yard before sunup and after you've finished work. You now have a heated greenhouse that allows you to garden all winter and to work under lights until bedtime. All your valuable plants are in the greenhouse because the dog you got to keep the deer away likes to pee on the plant pots. Inside the privet hedge, which is now eight feet high, you've put a chain link fence to keep the dog in and the deer out.

Stage 4 - The "The kids have all left home and we have money again" Gardener
Stage four comes when you buy a riding mower to cut the grass, a rototiller to dig the garden and you harvest the crops you can still reach. The flower garden becomes a wildflower garden that you mow at the end of summer (with the riding mower). The vegetable garden looks like Alcatraz to keep the deer and animals out and the dog is flopped by the fireplace, too tired to chase wildlife. The privet hedge has been removed leaving just the chain link fence.

Stage 5 - The Retired Gardener
Stage five occurs when you buy a condominium and relax on the lawn (that somebody else cuts), buy your vegetables (that somebody else grows) at the local farm stand, and keep a few flowers in a hanging basket. This allows you and your dog to lie in the lawn chair and watch the deer eat the next door neighbor's garden.

Roger's not too far from the mark, I suspect, and if I had to divulge my current gardening phase I would sit smack-bang in Stage 3. I just have to organise the greenhouse...

What about you?

So let's assume that you lost the seed packet or seedling tag with their planting directions on them. How would you be able to work out the best distances between your plants?

In order to calculate this yourself you need to take into consideration a few variables; root growth, foliage width and height of the mature plant.

• Root Growth - for carrots, parsnips, turnips, swedes and other umbellifers the vegetable is the root. These vegetables don't have a horizontal growing habit so you can afford to plant them quite close together. For these veggies the rule of thumb is to imagine the final sized carrot, turnip, swede etc and then double the width of it. This then becomes your plant spacing measurement.
• Foliage Growth - for vegetables that exhibit greater foliage growth than others such as cauliflowers, cabbages, broccoli and many of the asian leafy vegetables you will require a different standard spacing. Consider the final width of your mature leaf vegetable and multiply it by 1.5. This is the required distance between these plants.
• Height of the Mature Plant - this variable isn't as directive as the other two but it will affect the above rule of thumbs. For every 50-60cms (20-24 inches) of height you should consider another doubling of space between your plants. This is due to the size of the root structures required to uphold these plants plus also the need for light into the soil and foliage.

Now, these are only general rules - and very general at that. For many vegetables you can space them quite close together in the same row provided that you increase the distance of the rows between them. This forces the roots to access soil nutrients in a horizontal pattern rather than occupying the traditional circular area usually alloted to them. The benefit of spacing your vegetables this way is that you can gain easier access into your patch without reducing yields.

Plant Spacing by Sowing Seeds

Fine seeds; carrots, parsnips, radishes etc can be spaced out when they are being planted by combining the seeds with some clean river sand in a small jam jar. Shake the jar until the seeds have mixed with the sand well, poke a hole in the jam jar lid and then begin pouring along the drill.

Seeds will still require spacing out, even after this process, but there shouldn't be as much wastage when you do space them out.

Space your plants over time

One of the common mistakes newbie gardeners make when they're trying to grow a veggie garden is planting everything at once. They'll spend one weekend transplanting their corn, tomatoes, lettuces, and cabbages and realise that they have a glut of fruit in 4 months time.

It's much better to consider what your family will want to be eating on a weekly basis and then plant accordingly. This means staggering your plantings so that you have some vegetables maturing as others are being sown.

For instance; take broccoli as an example. Your family may eat 2-3 heads of broccoli per week so plant 6 seedlings every fortnight over the growing season and you should be able to achieve this

Conclusion

Plant spacing for vegetables is just as crucial to their success as watering and fertilising, so take the time to plan it well and you will reap the rewards.

Trying to stop plants becoming invasive weeds is almost as impossible as attempting to contain swine flu. No sooner do you think its been restrained then another outbreak occurs in an area where you least expected it. It appears, on the macro level at least, that weed control is as probable as reaching the mythical "gold at the end of the rainbow".

The problem is that weeds don't usually start out as weeds. Instead they commence life in our gardens as endeared plants that are lovingly cultivated and enjoyed. Yet, somehow, they morph from being nurtured plants to becoming an invasive species threatening to ruin our indigenous flora.

How do they get to this point?

For whatever reason that plant you bragged about with your gardening friends really did grow well in your garden. So well, in fact, that it escaped your boundaries and began growing just as well in that fertile soil along the local creekbed.

How did it get there? It arrived in this new haven of contentment when birds picked up the fruits or berries and dropped them along the way. Or, when gardeners discarded their unwanted plants in bushland. Or, when the wind carried flower seeds over your fence and into areas of less habitation.

We propagate them and share with friends or on-sell them at weekend markets. We dispose of them at the local refuse site expecting that action will finally rid us of this plant. We might even carelessly throw them into a compost heap that isn't see a lot of heating action at the moment.

The truth is that weeds are plants that have become a problem. And while you may assume that this might be the case with your neighbours garden, nearly every plant in YOUR garden is a ticking time-bomb. Given the right conditions many of your plants could, they may already have, escape from your boundaries and become problematic in other places.

So this is where the weed control balme game starts. Gardeners blame the nurseries for selling them the plants in the first place. The nurseries blame the botanical gardens for producing them and making them popular while the botanical gardens blame the government for not providing enough information to home gardeners. It's a dire chicken-egg scenario that seems to have no outcome - certainly no positive outcome, anyway.

While the other links in the chain continue to argue the point, home gardeners need to take some responsibility for weed control in their own backyards. Deadheading plants before they produce seeds, growing plants that are not listed on the local invasive species list, and taking precautions when passing on plants to other gardeners or discarding them are all positive steps that we can take to reduce the spread.

On the micro level, home gardeners can have a huge impact on the course of future weed growth.

So, when I sat down last night to check over this new review book that I'd been sent it was no surprise that my youngest daughter (M. is 7 years old) was pulling at my arm for me to read it to her. The front cover illustration of "Emily the Chickadee" grabbed her attention immediately.

The author, Carol Zelaya, relates a true story that happened to her as she was growing up. The story is about a little chickadee that comes and nests in her garden, lays some eggs and then raises her chicks in the same surroundings. A bond forms between Carol, as a little girl, and the chickadee that continues through the other two books in the series Caring for Emily's Family and Emily's New Home.

It's a great little story that encourages children to engage with their environment and slow down enough to notice the detail.

The aspects of the book that I liked the most were;

• The simple rhyming storyline that encouraged my little girl to read along,
• The beautiful illustrations drawn by Kristin Metcalf, and
• The Chickadee Log at the back of the book. Children can notate when they first saw a chickadee in their garden, whether they saw it eating and what time of the year they observed it in the garden. It truly encourages kids to think about their environment and the creatures that interact with it.

The dream is that we would have enough land to live on and be able to exist self-sustainably. There are some other dreams entwined within this that give the desire far more context but I won't go into that at the moment. But, you can assume that when I mention "self-sustainability" I'm not discussing this from a hippie, bong-toting, hermit-like existence - that's just not us.

So, if this dream ever comes off it means that we will not only be leaving this house but also this garden. And, even more devastating is leaving these plants.

While our desire here has been to create a little piece of paradise we never planted these specimens expecting that we would pass the garden on. So now I'm cataloguing through my mind which plants I couldn't leave without.

This notion may seem a little morbid but I see it as a window of opportunity to propagate some of the specimens that I truly love in the hope that they will be able to grow on our new property.

In cataloguing these plants there is the realisation that many of them could easily be replaced tomorrow with nursery stock. They aren't super-special although I truly do appreciate them and would probably buy many of them - especially the ones that have performed so well - again for the next property.

Which leaves only a handful of plants that are significant and hard to come by. These are;

1. Irish Strawberry Tree - we bought this 2 years ago from a little nursery in the back blocks of Collie (2 hours drive from here). We didn't plan to buy it because (a) we didn't need another tree, and (b) strawberry trees aren't that easy to come by, but we knew this was a limited opportunity so grasped it with both hands. I will try propagating it but seeing as it's still too young to fruit I'm tending towards digging the complete plant up and replacing it with another specimen when we leave.
2. Magnolia soulangeana "Rustica Rubra" - although I mentioned my intense delight in these plants within my 4 Incredible Trees post I never did share how we came to finally possess one of these beauties.

   The story goes that we spent months, years even, scouring the land for a deciduous magnolia - to no avail. In the end we reconciled with ourselves that we would never be able to get one of these unless we imported one from Melbourne (on the other side of the country where they grow like weeds) and the whole transaction would cost us $250+ for one tree - with no guarantees.

   The weekend before I left for Melbourne we decided to take a drive in the country and came upon a nursery that we had never heard, or seen, of before. And to our great delight the nursery owner was an avid plantsman who stocked magnolia soulangeanas in abundance - and sold them for $20 each. Alas, he's closed his business now so trying to source a replica is not an easy option.

   Therefore, this plant will be propagated day and night until I finally get one...or two...hundred to strike.

3. Variegated Ficus - this is one of those plants that Deb hates but I've grown a tender-spot for. It grows in a pot - where any good ficus should grow - on our patio and is a remnant from many past gardens during our early married years.

   I could replace it tomorrow, and if Deb had her way it would be tomorrow, but I have this nostalgic sentimentality attachment to it that would struggle to part ways with it. Even though it's in dire need of repotting and requires some support to straighten its trunk again, this plant is still a "keeper" in my books.

So there you have it. Three plants that will definitely be going with us should we ever decide to move away from this garden and continue the journey planting elsewhere.

What are a few plants that you couldn't bear to part ways with? And, do they have sentimental anecdotes that accompany them?