Growing beautiful plants so you can create beautiful gardens

Today we have the beautiful China Rose Archduke Charles, the robust hardy disease resistant rose is a perfect example of the beauty of the China roses. Not super thorny and flowering almost constantly, growing to 1-1.5m tall it’s an easy shrub to fit in the garden or at the back of salvias. China roses rarely need pruning apart from a light shaping in summer, you don’t prune these in winter as most roses, they hold their foliage all year as well. Lots available online now, the roses have been selling fast so highly recommended jumping online now! Have a great Thursday everyone ❤️

You guys probably know, I’m not the biggest red person.. but I will admit this Clearview Claret is rather nice don’t you think? We have been blessed with beautiful soaking rain that over the last 4 days has totaled upto 53mm ❤️ what a blessing as it was starting to get a little bit dry there, the garden has already burst with new growth. Have a lovely Wednesday I’m off to get pick up orders ready and get things sorted for the Easter long weekend, lots of projects happening gearing up for a big project at the Wyreema garden!

Another day another tray of roses to pot up. Plenty of roses available online now, we do have a lot more varieties coming on and I’m still potting them up. So varieties that are marked as Sold Out on the website are still coming!

I do say this often, that my favourite Dahlia is the one that is currently open, but in all seriousness Formby Art is very much a favourite. It’s loving this damp autumn weather we are having that is for sure, as is this gardener it’s been a bit between drinks now!

Rosa Wirriana White Fairy I adore this little rose, a found rose from a SA cemetery. If you are tight on space then I can’t recommend this rose enough. Has a beautiful soft perfume and flowers all year around. Such a beautiful little rose, Wirriana White Fairy is a must for all rose gardens! https://www.thegrovecg.com/product/Rosa-polyantha-Wirriana-White-Fairy-p448596521 #roses #heritage #heirloomroses #heritagerose #rosesofinstagram #heirloom #rose

Welcome to the weekend! A lovely cooler change has descended and finally that overnight heat is lessened and good nights sleep are able to return! Have to love some clearance shopping centre flowers and some greens from the garden for this weeks arrangement. As much as I love showcasing the Dahlias I am growing I’m reminded by arrangements like this that simple colours are also needed at times, especially when life is a bit chaotic! Hope you enjoy what I created and have a lovely weekend 🤍🤍🤍

Comtesse de Labarthe available online now 🩷 One of the hardiest and most beautiful old pink tea roses available in Australia. I love tea roses as they need almost no pruning, they have very good disease resistance and bloom almost all year round.

White Cecil Brunner is available online now, ready for shipping after Easter 🐣 This is a delightful small growing rose suited to any garden. Order online here https://www.thegrovecg.com/product/Rosa-Polyantha-Cecile-Brunner-White-p430550471

Let’s not do as many rose cuttings this year.. yer well that’s working out well 😅 So many of my own roses and friends roses we have planted over the last 4 years are now starting to mature so now is not the time to be doing less but more! So many new varieties of rare Heritage Roses we have never sold before as well. Hope everyone is excited for another great Rose year!

Pleasant morning as always visiting a friend’s beautiful country garden. Filled with hardy perennials, beautiful Heritage Roses, hedges and deciduous trees. It’s honestly perfection ☺️ Close ups of the Roses pictured are Stan’s Laidley Rose small pink Le Vesuve bigger pink/apricot Of course we gathered many cuttings as we now have many more cultivars getting big enough to do cuttings of which is exciting so we can share them online with you all.

Potted this week the beautiful tea rose Jean Ducher. Always amazed to see such tiny plants knowing one day they will be beautiful shrubs

Tall old fashioned Alstroemerias are now available! Many new colours and some truly reliable old ones! You won’t be disappointed! Limited numbers of some colours so don’t delay and order now! https://www.thegrovecg.com/category/All-Other-Bulbs #nursery #toowoombaregion #garden #pittsworth #bloomwhereyouareplanted #flowers #smallbusiness #flowersofinstagram #winner #focushrbea22

Podcast in, plants to be potted away we go! If only it was actually this fast!

The lighting is a bit harsh and it’s hard to see but I have finally tied back and down the long canes to the fence of Mrs Fred Danks, she’s determined to grow into quite the climber which is fine, there is plenty of room on the fence for her I just need to keep up on her maintenance, apparently she only grown 1.5-2m tall and wide according to resources 🙄 well at least 3m height and wide now safe to say she’s loving it here in the wyreema garden. Training the big canes horizontal will increase the flower production as well as side branched form which will be another added benefit! Have a great Monday I’m off to the nursery to get stuck into some fun projects and off to look at a landscape installation I did late last year!

Was a productive day preserving some of the summers harvest. All my recipes come from an incredible book called A year in a bottle, I was looking to make a chilli sauce and came across a strawberry and chilli recipe and it caught my attention instantly! Well the house smells amazing filled with sweet chilli notes with a hint of ginger and garlic, just delicious now to let it sit for a few weeks and mellow although it already tastes fantastic! Hope you have all had a lovely weekend!

Last of the corn harvest done and eaten was delicious I can tell you! The vegetable garden is emptying of summer crops and making way for winter veggies! Warm soils and cool nights are perfect for brassicas of all descriptions! I’m doing a big final planting of carrots and going to try and sneak an autumn planting of potatoes in as well! What are you planting this lovely Autumn weekend?

Happy Friday everyone! The weekend is almost here 🥰 A bunch of Carlos Watermelon for you all to enjoy today ❤️

With several lawn chemicals going off the market I am trialing a few alternatives. The flame throwers are definitely a lot more fun I can tell you! And who doesn’t love a lawn looking like a friesian cow 🤣 But in seriousness it does kill weed seeds as it goes which chemicals typically do not.. happy Thursday all and enjoy the patch lawn!

Always glad for my poor fingers when rose cuttings are finished for the day! Really happy with how they are looking and the ones done over the last few weeks are already being potted up and into the sun to harden off. This is the third year of growing own rooted roses and every year I get just a little bit more efficient and a bit better strike rate than the last season. Hopefully this time around we will have even better numbers to come in the future

Another beautiful day to do rose cuttings, Then Thousand Lights is one of my favourite China roses, like Mutabilis it has different toned flowers as they age and it’s in a semi double form. Marjorie Palmer is also very much on my favourites list, a relatively unknown Alistair Clark rose it absolutely should be grown a lot more. The timeless classic beauty of Perle d’Or’ in its beautiful buff tones. I recently planted Mme. Joseph Schwartz and I have snuck a few cuttings from her, she is a relatively unknown sport of the every popular Dutchesse de Barbrant, just as tough and hardy and similar sized but in a lovely white 🤍 Ok coffee break is over time to get a few hundred cuttings in!

A beautiful hardy Polyantha rose that you hardly ever see around is White Cecile Brunner. This rose was discovered prior to 1909 in France as a sport of the famous Cecile Brunner. I have a beautiful one in the garden and was able to get a good batch of cuttings from it this season. So look out for these beautiful plants on the website

Morning all, Please note a long time ago we decided to not ‘ship in short weeks’ so over the next three months with the rather large amount of public holidays we will have limited shipping days. So the following Mondays we will be shipping, 18/3 8/4 15/4 29/4 13/5 We then return to regular weekly shipping. Thanks for understanding and is my way of delivering the best quality service and products possible to you.

Looking young and fresh! It’s amazing just how fast plants grow at this time of year! Can’t wait to release our Alstroemerias next week!

Sure is nice to be back packing orders again 💚 Stock is limited still but plenty more coming including quite a few roses 😊

Working on getting some of my lovely house plants back into better health. Now that the house repairs are all finally completed after the dishwasher flood in September last year! I did a lot about a month ago throwing out what had died from the conditions/neglect and now I can finally set everything and get them growing again 🥰

This week’s bunch picked first thing, Dahlias are hitting their stride after a hot humid summer! Happy Saturday everyone enjoy your gardens 💚

Happy International Women’s Day! Today, we celebrate the incredible achievements and contributions of women everywhere, including in the world of gardening. From nurturing seeds to cultivating vibrant blooms, women have always played a vital role in connecting with nature and fostering growth. Let's continue to empower and support each other as we plant the seeds of change and growth, both in our gardens and in our communities. Here's to all the green-thumbed goddesses out there! Happy Gardening Matthew

More roses heading into propagation as the first batches done 3 weeks ago head out and are to be potted up this week. Autumn is just the best time of year!

The nursery is filling up and so is the website, so excited to be back selling plants again after our summer break! Jump online and see what’s available, more to be added each week ☺️

When we moved into the Wyreema garden we had one lonely tree and one bird of paradise on the whole property. Well 12 months later and the addition of 23 new trees I finally mustered up the courage to remove the tree that no longer fit the redesigned front yard. It’s always a battle to remove something that is perfectly healthy from a garden but the given the extensive plantings and space for wildlife to now play they are hardly going to notice this tree gone. Such a weight has lifted and it proves you should never live with a plant that isn’t bringing you happiness! If in doubt chop it out, I will get the stump out this weekend and maybe pop some turf runners in and the lawn shall be complete

The first batches of plants are ready to start shipping next week! Only limited numbers available, I need orders placed by Saturday Nights so I can process orders and ship on Mondays. Happy Shopping! https://www.thegrovecg.com/category/All-Plants

Nice little haul from the Lifeline Book Fest today! Always fun finding books you have been looking for, the heritage rose journals are a wonderful resource and I have been after Colour a Garden for over 10 years so it’s nice to have, one of the best references for gardening by colour.

Observing how much a garden transforms in just 12 months provides valuable insights into the growth patterns and habits of various plant species, highlighting the diversity and wonder of the plants we grow.

Nursery helper needed.. current one keeps falling asleep on the job 🤣🤣🤣

One of the most underrated plant groups for our area are conifers. They were definitely overdone at times in the past and planted in not the best of locations but there are many lovely ones that we should enjoy more. Cupressus Blue Ice is definitely one of those, it can get a bit to hot and dry for Blue Spruces here and they are o so very slow growing but if you love that look, and who doesn’t I highly recommend these. I don’t remember when I planted this one but it’s roughly 6-7 years old now and I have even managed to find the room for one at the smaller Wyreema garden I love it so much. Very cold hardy and once established no additional water in most years is required.

Luffa update! We are finally getting good fruit set, these unusual vines seem to set just one female flower on each stem of flowers followed by male blooms. There is always something to learn from the plants we grow. Sometimes you don’t know how plants will behave till you start growing them, killing them and sometimes having success with them. Reading and searching the internet is great but sometimes it’s just fun to pop a plant in and learn about them as they grow!

Roses are growing roots already! Plenty more cuttings to get done but excited to see roots forming just 14 days later 🥰

Remember the pumpkin vine I showed you earlier in the week? Well this is what’s hiding underneath! Tromboncino is an old Italian Butternut Squash/Pumpkin cultivar, picked young it’s a lovely Zucchini and left to mature they turn into these massive Pumpkins with a lovely flavour and have stored well in previous years for me. Its to late to sow pumpkins in cold areas but put this one on your list for next spring!

Mrs Oakley Fisher is such a delightful colour. I’m pretty partial to these open faced Roses so much so I have planted an entire hedge of them, this is an old Hybrid Tea but it has great qualities including being quite disease resistant as you can see by the bright healthy foliage.

Blessed with 4mm of rain in a lovely sun shower yesterday afternoon, the cottage garden is loving it

Happy Thursday all, can just about smell the weekend 💚

When you let that pumpkin vine grow just once.. #seaofpumpkin #triffid #takeover

Scarlet Runner beans are such a pretty edible, I love their crimson blooms all summer long and we get to harvest delicious beans 😊 another added benefit is they are perennial so you only need to plant them every few years 😊

Lavandula Grosso cuttings looking and smelling positively delicious this morning! Have a great day everyone, I’ll be sweating it out in the propagation house 😅

Would you look at this beautiful seedling Gaura that’s popped up in the Pittsworth garden! Cuttings going in today of this sweetly coloured plant

Still going beautifully, these Zinnias are starting to set seeds. I’ll be packaging them up for next spring for the website as you guys seemed very keen on them!

Have to love a disappearing garden path, where will it lead?

Very excited to have Loofas growing this season, it’s so much fun growing food to eat but also things that we can use in our homes.

Afternoon all, Our spring bulbs are now online. Our email customers have already shopped up a storm so please if you’re thinking about ordering from us do so quickly as the remaining bulbs will not last long! Thanks Matthew https://www.thegrovecg.com/category/Spring-Bulbs?

It’s time again to start propagating own root roses, today I did 600 cuttings over 11 cultivars. Mainly old teas, Polyanthas and Chinas, these are some of the most reliable roses for Australia, Madame Antoine Mari Archduke Charles Louie Philippe Dutchess de Barbrant ‘In cultivation as Jean Ducher’ Albertine Bloomfield Courage Else Poulsen Cecile Brunner White Albertine Cherokee Rose Straw Rose Wirriana White Fairy All getting ready for winter/spring plantings

O Borderer, you sweet sweet Rose. Australian bred by Alistair Clark over 100 years ago in 1921. Still living on in peoples gardens including mine.

Just 4 days later we have action on our seed sowing efforts earlier this week! I will start fertilising now to get them lovely and healthy and potted up in a few weeks 💚

Apart of the new Wyreema garden is a significant proportion of roses, I will be using these to propagate from over the coming months. One of the main features in the front is a hedge of Mrs Dudley Cross. Still only small they have been blooming away filling the garden with colour. You can see why I say if I could only ever have one rose it would be Mrs Dudley Cross. She’s fragrant, thornless and starts out this beautiful creamy pink aging to rich dark pink shades, disease resistant with foliage all year round it’s such a winner!

Ahhh the beauty of the old tea roses 🌹 Dr Grill is a stand out in the garden this morning, bred in 1884 it’s stood the test of time as a stunning Rose for our gardens.

Few different cultivars of Alstrolmeria blooming in the nursery today. Ready to be divided again and propagated for the seasons ahead

Seed is a great place to start back into the nursery, it’s a fast and easy way to grow lots of plants! Now to work on repairing the irrigation and getting the misting system up and running tomorrow before it gets to hot!

Bit of work getting the nursery back under control, but for not being in it for 3 months it could have been a lot worse 😅😅😅

Ficus triangularis, such a beautiful ficus species! Highly recommend! Lots of bright light, even some direct light in the early mornings and afternoons is perfect! I have a handful of babies available now, message me for more information! #indoorplants #indoorjungle #houseplant #ficus #ficustriangularisvariegata

Morning everyone! I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend ahead, for me it marks my return to the nursery. I have taken the past 3 months off from the nursery, for many factors but mostly that I was tired. I have been working in the nursery industry for 15 years now and with any job the risk of burnout is always there. So having a break and doing something else was needed for a time, I absolutely love plants, gardening and growing food that will never change. Running a business however actually really sucks, not going to lie it’s awful sometimes and I really wish people were more open and honest about that. I have amazing customers and I am always grateful for you all and your wonderful comments and support. I am about to start propagating plants again and they’ll be added to the website over the coming months. I can’t wait to see what the 2024 seasons have in store for all us gardeners!

Happy Friday! One of my Rosa rugosas blooming away looking so lovely and healthy, I have planted it in a hedge to add some whimsical flowers to what would otherwise be a lovely bit monotonous Eleaegnus hedge

Loving the colour combination of Salvia Mesa Azure and Rosa Ronald Dahl. I had other plans for this rose but it’s much paler than I expected but this is a wonderful compromise!

Well, my army has been hard at work and look at the results a mere 7 days after release! Beautiful fresh healthy growth. Again identifying the pest you have is important as getting the right insects to help fight your battles for you is vital for success! Happy Gardening everyone! And thanks Bugs for Bugs for providing these as options for treatment

Hard to believe that this garden is only 14 months old! Full of colour and so much insect life as well, I have posted a photo of this garden when it was planted, Tubestock plants really are the best size to start out with!

A rose that has continued to surprise me is Gruss an Aachen, regular flushes of blooms and beautiful healthy foliage. Apparently the leaf cutter bees are growing in population as their chewing is now a lot more evident on the roses which is wonderful! A garden is about a lot more than just flowers!

This is what I love about Tea Roses, they are beautiful shrubs in the garden almost all year round. They require no regular pruning, flower consistently and have no disease problems. Captured yesterday at the Pittsworth garden, after a week of extreme heat.

I have taken the whole garden needs coverage approach to my application of good bugs. So almost every plant got a light dusting of some of the predatory mites. As you can see miss honeybee was already out and about at 5am completely unaware and unaffected by my new army. I obviously applied slightly heavier where I knew they were present on the Dahlias and this is my main goal to protect them. And hopefully these new additions will enjoy their new garden to hunt and kill spider mites in! Again I can’t recommend Bugs for Bugs enough, they are a local Toowoomba company. Not sponsored at all, I bought these fully off my own bat, I just believe in supporting companies that help gardeners on their journey.

If you’re on the east coast of Australia I am sure you can relate 🤣🤣🤣

Picked before sunrise and before today’s heat. I absolutely love these Queen Lime Blush Zinnias, such a lovely muted pop of colour for the house!

Well it’s been a hot sweaty weekend of gardening projects. I had some left over concrete from another fun project I’ll share later, I made steps for the slopes of the back wild garden path. I plan on surrounding them with some coarse mulch so they blend in a little more. But very excited to have this project almost completed and to define these paths a little bit better when people visit the garden.

Florelie Balaton over a few days, quite similar in shape and side to Florelie Morello just dustier which I actually kinda love!

The Dahlias are just thriving right now, Florelie Tutu is looking lovely today. A lovely medium informal decorative!

The summer continues, Dahlias are really hitting their stride now. These are easy plants, I don’t fuss about on mine much after planting apart from regular watering and maybe a feed of chicken manure pellets at the start of the season. Devon Choice is a really good performer in terms of flower production as well, highly recommend!

Molly Sharman Crawford is one of the most floriferous old Roses in my gardens, she ranges from soft pink to mostly white. Very healthy foliage as well which is a must for a rose to stay in my garden.

Small successions of vegetables is not always easy to achieve.. but with practice you figure how much your family eats and of what and can sow to that, I have been not growing enough beans.. apparently they are something we eat a lot of so I have do a big bed of them and another patch of corn, hopefully I will have enough and maybe some excess for friends.. but not to many that they go to waste..

Florelie Kahuna what a beautiful bloom! I feel like this one will be popular

Welcome to the party Cafe Au Lait, you sure can see why this one cultivar inspired a new generation of gardeners to grow these beautiful flowers

I love Gladiolus.. they just don’t display all that well in vases, especially when I don’t grow them all that well and they flop all over the ground lol! Sure makes for some interesting angles don’t ya think!

The harvest continues! The carrots I sowed in spring have been harvested on over the past month or so are really starting to get girthy! One of these is plenty of carrot for us for dinner, the taste of fresh carrots is absolutely nothing like what you get in the plastic packets at the supermarket, these are rich and earthy. The hardest part about growing carrots is getting them germinated. They need to be planted on the surface of the soil where they can get light but they can’t dry out, a quick mist twice a day for the first 7 days is usually enough to get them up and going, a light covering of mulch also helps or a piece of shade cloth on hot days as well ☺️

Starting to get some lovely angles in the garden now, lots of colour contrast was one of my strong design elements of this garden, as well as repetitive plantings. The smaller the space the more important to make it feel cohesive.

Ok new favourite of the day! Cliffs Salmon 🥰 what a colour

Welcome to the part Sugartown Sunrise! One of the most beautiful Dahlias in my opinion! What’s your favourite Dahlia?

Harvest! Growing your own food is one of the most rewarding aspects of gardening. I love flowers but a warm tomato properly vine ripened is pretty hard to beat! I planted one bag of Dutch Cream potatoes in the spring and now look! Enough potatoes for quite a while! When the costs of living are high, the gardener reaps the reward!

It’s a very Dahlia time of year! Freshly picked from the garden 🥰

Hard to believe that just 12 months ago there was not a plant in sight in this backyard. Very happy with how the remaining lawn is turning out as well at the wyreema garden.

Wishing all our customers a wonderful start to 2024, may it be kind and gentle 💚

From my garden to yours Merry Christmas, may you have a happy healthy festive time ❤️ See you in the new year ☺️

Perfect first harvest of Lazy Housewife Beans today, just a quick top and tail and they are good to steam to strings attached 🤣 sorry that’s a terrible pun! Happy Christmas Eve everyone

As far as Dahlias go Granite Queen Bee is a pretty spectacular cultivar. It barely even looks like a Dahlia!

Zinnia Queen Lime Blush loving the heat, better get out there tomorrow and pick some more so they keep blooming!

I love gardening and growing flowers.. I know you’re all in shock at that statement! Stop laughing! But what I love is growing enough to share, these are destined for my grandparents ❤️ picked at 5am before the heat of the day dehydrated them. Hopefully some cooler weather on the way, the past few days of 38°C have been terrible!

Pearle de or greeted me in the garden this morning, stay hydrated it’s so hot and humid today! Maybe a ⛈️ or two over the coming days 🤞🏻🤞🏻🤞🏻

Along our front fence I have planted 3 beautiful Mrs Dudley Cross, she’s a beautiful mid sized tea rose and completely thornless which is wonderful. A lovely light scent and beautiful burgundy new growth. They have been a little slow to establish but they are in the hardest driest part of my garden so that’s to be expected

Nothing like a pure white Dahlia! Formby Alpine is one of the best white decorative types 🤍🤍🤍 #dahlia #dahlias #dahliaaddict #dahliaseason #dahlialove #dahliagarden #dahliafarm #dahliasofinstagram

Just a few Alistair Clark roses that are blooming around the garden now. Names are on each photo ☺️

Summer in the garden means tomatoes and Dahlias, both of which I have been harvesting to use in the house and give to friends, what an abundance

Long hot days aren’t slowing down the Crepe Myrtles, rain at the right time really brought out their flowering this season

What a difference the rains make, and more importantly the follow up rain 💚💚💚 happy Thursday everyone

Artemisia Lambrook Silver, was watered in 4 years ago and never received a watering since surviving solely on what rains have fallen. The more plants we can plant that can stress in drought, may look terrible but then survive the better. Plants do need water, and drought resistant plants aren’t a thing, but drought resilient plants are. If we were have gone on any longer I would have had to have given these a drink, but thankfully the rain came and two weeks later you would never know these were wilted drought stressed plants.

The garden is absolutely singing! Another 20mm of rain, the grass is green and all feels a lot more relaxed now 💚