10 Best Ornamental Pear Varieties in Australia
Pick the pear by the space it gets at maturity, not by the flowers it shows at the nursery. Ten ornamental pear varieties cover Australian gardens from a 2 m wide column to a 12 m shade tree. The rest…
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Disappearing Root Rot: 10 Strategies to Protect Ginseng Roots and Avoid Replant Ground
Disappearing root rot hollows ginseng roots until nothing but a fragile shell remains, and there is no cure. The plant fails to come up in spring, or it wilts rapidly and never recovers, and by the time the shoot shows…
Daylily Leaf Streak: 10 Strategies to Tell It From Daylily Rust and Keep It Cosmetic
Daylily leaf streak turns daylily leaves yellow from the tip down, and most cases are cosmetic, not fatal. The yellow streak follows the midvein, the tissue browns, and in severe cases the leaf dies, while the flowers keep opening as…
Cypress Canker: 10 Strategies to Find the Canker and Save Your Tree
Cypress canker kills branches one at a time, and no fungicide stops it. A single yellow-to-reddish-brown branch among green branches is the first sign, and the canker usually sits several feet down the branch near the trunk, not at the…
Cymbidium Mosaic Virus: 10 Strategies to Test It, Stop It Spreading, and Protect Your Collection
Cymbidium mosaic virus has no cure, and it hides. An infected orchid can look healthy for months, bloom normally, and still carry the virus, and one cut with a contaminated tool can pass it to the next plant. The 10…
Cutting Rot: 10 Strategies to Tell Wet Rot From Dry Rot and Save Your Cuttings
Cutting rot is the moment a propagation goes wrong. The cutting looked healthy yesterday, and today the base is soft, dark, or slimy. The 10 strategies below tell you how to read the rot type, wet, dry, gray, or slimy,…
Summer Patch: 10 Strategies to Tell It From Brown Patch and Save Your Lawn
Summer patch is the lawn disease that kills the plant while you watch the leaves. The patches appear in summer heat, but the infection happened in spring, weeks before you saw anything. The 10 strategies below tell you how to…
10 Best Callistemon Varieties for Australian Gardens
Pick the bottlebrush by its mature size, not by its flower photo. Ten varieties cover every Australian job, from a 1 m dwarf for pots to a 4 m screen for a boundary. These are the 10 best callistemon varieties…
Ficus Hillii Flash in Australia
Ficus Hillii Flash is the cultivar Ficus microcarpa variety hillii ‘Flash’, sold in Australia as Ficus hillii ‘Flash’. Plant it 80 cm to 1 m apart, keep its roots 4 m from buildings, paving, and pipes, and trim it 2…
Growing Magnolias in Australia
Pick a magnolia that fits your climate, plant it in late winter or early spring, and give it acid soil, deep water, and shelter from wind. That is growing magnolias in Australia in one line. The rest of this page…
Azalea Lace Bug: How to Identify and Treat It
Flip one azalea leaf. Black dots underneath plus pale stippling on top name azalea lace bug. That pair of signs separates it from every other azalea pest, and the check takes 10 seconds. Azalea lace bug is Stephanitis pyrioides, a…
Best Palms for Small Australian Gardens
Measure the space first, then pick 1 of the 8 palms below. That is how you choose the best palms for Australian gardens that stay small. The rest of this page is 8 picks, from the shade-tolerant Kentia to the…
How to Choose the Right Shade Tree for Your Garden
A shade tree is a tree that casts useful shade. The right shade tree is the one that fits your site. Choose it by 6 decisions, in order: the shading job, the site, the species, the size, evergreen or deciduous,…
Leather Rot on Strawberries: 9 Strategies to Tell It From Gray Mold and Keep It Off Your Berries
Leather rot on strawberries is the rot that lies. A ripe berry can look healthy and taste bitter, and one bitter berry can spoil a whole batch of jam. The 9 strategies below tell you how to spot the rot…
Ganoderma Butt Rot on Palms: 9 Strategies to Spot It Early, Remove It Safely, and Protect Your Other Palms
Ganoderma butt rot on palms has no cure, and that fact shapes the 9 strategies below. No fungicide cures an infected palm. No fertilizer rebuilds destroyed trunk tissue. No conk removal cures the palm. The strategies tell you how to…
White Smut on Gaillardia: 5 Strategies to Spot It, Tell It From Powdery Mildew, and Stop It Spreading
White spots on blanket flower leaves are usually powdery mildew, and that is exactly why white smut gets misdiagnosed. Home content overwhelmingly answers “white spots on Gaillardia” with mildew, and a gardener who sprays for mildew while the real problem…
Java Black Rot on Sweet Potatoes: 7 Ways to Keep Your Stored Harvest Rot-Free
Sweet potatoes rot in storage when a wound lets a fungus in, and the same 7 steps block every storage rot, not just one. Java black rot is the named example here, because it is the rot with the most…
Iris Leaf Spot: 10 Strategies to Tell It From Iris Rust and Protect Your Irises
Iris leaf spot rarely kills an iris outright, and that fact shapes the whole response. Repeated attacks weaken the plant, strip its leaves early, and cut bloom, while the plant itself usually survives. The 10 strategies below tell you how…
Hosta Virus X (HVX): 10 Strategies to Tell It From Variegation, Test It, and Stop It Spreading
Hosta virus X has no cure. A hosta that tests positive stays infected for life, and the only honest response is to destroy the plant, sanitize everything that touched it, and protect the rest of the collection. The 10 strategies…
How to Bring Small Birds Back to Your Australian Backyard: 11 Plants and Tips for Fairy-Wrens, Finches and Thornbills
Small birds are missing from your backyard because the yard suits their bullies. Open lawn, a thin mid-storey, big-nectar plants, roaming cats, and bird feeders all favour noisy miners and other aggressive birds. One contained cat saves 110 native animals…
