This morning I joined a tour of the Raising Rarities nursery and the Australia garden at Cranny Royal Botanic Gardens. Was set up as part of the fundraiser for the 3CR Garden Show and hosted by 3 of the most knowledgeable and down-to-earth blokes in Melbourne horticulture. Russel Larke (head of Hort at the gardens), John Arnott (his now-retired predecessor) and Rodger Elliot (who along with his wife Gwen has penned many books and has received an Order of Australia for contributions to horticulture and native plants). It was a plant-nerd's dream and I was buzzing throughout. Have never had a dream job, but I do now: to work on Raising Rarities in some capacity. The program is pioneering conservation horticulture on several fronts, collecting, studying, propagating and testing a number of threatened Victorian species. (A large portion of the plants we were shown are from the Grampians). Program info here - https://www.rbg.vic.gov.au/news-and-stories/raising-rarity-paper/ One of the main goals of RR to get these endangered plants garden-ready and into mainstream horticulture, but there's also a huge community development focus, connecting with schools, councils and other botanic gardens around Victoria to raise awareness and connect people to nature. It was all very inspiring. Larke had just returned from the Global Botanic Gardens Conference in Singapore where he presented on RR and it apparently it created much buzz, so hopefully people outside of Victoria (and Australia) will see things like it coming their way. Cranbourne RBG itself is evolving in an exciting direction, with the emphasis shifting from being a highly aesthetic and structured show-garden that represents all of Australias plants, to one that showcases Victoria's many bioregions more specifically in a more naturalistic way... Also fascinating to learn about how they manage to include the diversity of species from so many different parts of Australia. This included the cloud-forest garden, which features a number of sub-alpine species from QLD that are at risk due to climate change. A must-visit if you're in Melbs! Also, at various points of the tour spotted pardalotes, eastern spinebills and red-browed finches made appearances and a swamp wallaby poked its head around a bush before disappearing again. It was surreal and wonderful.

This patch is really putting out a good batch of strawberries. How do you like to eat strawberries? 🍓 I find I tend to eat them fresh out in the garden.

Here’s an upcoming online chat I thought a few people would be interested in! Join Costa Georgiadis Thursday 12th September

I made a short vid to show off the calamansi as someone I was talking to recently hadn’t heard of it before. Have you guys had anything to do with it before? https://youtube.com/shorts/6CKybi3gf0c?si=Jn0I4F2p58mIQbXu

In this video I talk about a banana clump that I purposely let die as I no longer wanted it in the location. However instead of digging it out I continuously cut back any growth until ultimately it died. Then the soil food web has done the rest, adding its organic matter to the soil. I’ve been trying to figure out how to share videos for a while and after some asking I found out sharing links from YouTube and similar sites is the only way as the max upload is 100mb https://youtu.be/9wW1YtCCJVE?si=pliNzLxDrnOuT-SU