Tuesday, March 31, 2026
EditorialGreener Spaces Better Places UpdateUncategorized

What’s Growing on?

BOOSTING THE APPEAL OF PLANTS IN AUSTRALIAN HOMES

In spring 2025, the Greener Spaces Better Places program launched a national consumer campaign funded by the nursery levy.


With lack of interest overtaking cost as a key barrier to buying more plants, a new campaign has made the benefits of plants hard to ignore by linking them to property value.… Continue reading

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Green InfrastructureLandscape

Building living infrastructure

Why more women are choosing trade pathways

By Michael Casey

If you have spent any time on a green roof installation, a streetscape retrofit or a living wall maintenance visit, you will have noticed the shift: crews are changing, conversations are changing, and so is what ‘good trade work’ looks like in green infrastructure, which matters because the work ahead is significant.Continue reading

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LandscapeLandscape Design

Better with age

By Lynne Testoni

A luxury landscape for a seniors’ living project features quality elements from the rooftop down.

A premium senior living development, The Langlee, was a construction project with multiple elements of soft landscaping, irrigation, maintenance and hard landscaping from the ground to the rooftops, including outdoor kitchens and firepits.… Continue reading

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Garden DesignLandscape

Temporal dynamics in design

How living systems accumulate value

By Erik van Zuilekom

Unlike built infrastructure that generally depreciates from day one, ecologically designed landscapes appreciate through biological compound interest. This temporal inversion, where gardens become more valuable, stable, and integrated over time, emerges when we design with succession rather than against it.Continue reading

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Plant PalettePlants

Atriplex: A story of saltbush

By Clive Larkman

In my last article, ‘Saltbushes of the world’, I wrote about halophytes including mangroves, samphires and saltbush (Hort Journal Australia, February 2026). Like mangroves and samphires, saltbush occurs around the globe in a diverse range of climatic conditions.Continue reading

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Plant PalettePlants

An ancient tree for contemporary gardens

By Caleb Roberts

Botanical name: Ginkgo biloba

Common names: Ginkgo, maidenhair tree

Family: Ginkgoaceae

Origin or native range: Ginkgo biloba is the sole surviving species within its entire division, class, order and family. This monotypic ‘living fossil’, so called because fossils nearly identical to the modern tree date back to the Jurassic period (around 170 million years ago), is now found virtually unchanged from its earlier iterations in small, woodland populations in temperate China.… Continue reading

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EditorialIndustry Event

Australian Horticultural Trials Week

By Gabrielle Stannus

The 2025 Australian Horticultural Trials Week kicked off on Monday 1 December with a Summer Soiree held at KCC Park in Skye. The Nursery and Garden Industry Victoria (NGIV) announced the winners of its 2026 Plant of the Year awards during the evening, with Mansfield’s Propagation Nursery taking out the top gong for Corymbia ficifolia ‘Precious Pearl’.Continue reading

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Garden CentresNursery Industry

Reinventing the independent garden centre

By John Stanley, Sid Raisch and Dries Jansen

This series of articles aims to look at the future opportunities, changes and challenges that independent garden centres around the globe face in the next few years. Before we look into our crystal ball, we should first look back.Continue reading

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Edible landscapesLandscape

Edible landscapes in the public realm

By Chris Williams

In this article I outline reasons for integrating community-based food production into municipal-level open space strategies. I argue that food production in public landscapes should be a fundamental part of a multi-functional urban green space system. Within this framework, thinking of crops and food plants as potentially edimental (both edible and ornamental) offers a powerful way to achieve the following: high-quality aesthetic objectives for general open space users; increased cultural relevance (through so-called culturally appropriate foods); and production of food for use by volunteer growers or for donation to food relief organisations.Continue reading

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