In bloom: Geelong Garden Club’s Norma Beckwith enjoys a return to regular gardening after years of drought and water restrictions. Picture: Tommy Ritchie
Andrew Mathieson
BRIGHT colours have come back to life in Geelong gardens as households find their green thumbs again after drought-breaking rain.
Gardening experts are enjoying a rosy outlook after recent heavy rain doused previous gloomy forecasts that the quintessential, old-fashioned Aussie garden was dying.
A leading local nursery reported that it was on track for its best sales in 15 years.
Van Loon’s Heidi Martin said the past spring had been a “nurseryman’s dream season”.
“It’s really been the past 12 months that we’ve had a good year of rainfall, so there has been that slow build of people feeling more confident. All their water tanks are full and their gardens are not drying out like they have been,” Ms Martin said.
“I think people have being feeling a bit starved for colour over the past few years and have been concentrating on grasses and super-hardy stuff that’s not always the most colourful.
“There’s been a big increase in (sales of) colourful plant lines.”
Ms Martin said roses, hydrangeas, delphiniums, daisies and lavenders, once thought to have gone the way of the dinosaur, were blooming again.
Limited rain and watering restrictions had forced novice gardeners to dig up old flowers in favour of drought-tolerant and succulent plants in recent years, she said.
But Mrs Martin predicted that spending days with hands buried in moist soil was again on the rise.
“We’ve had a lot of customers who haven’t been in for a couple of years just because they have lost some confidence – now they’re back enjoying their old gardens,” she said.
“A lot of families are also getting into gardening, particularly veggie gardens.”
Geelong Gardening Club president Peg Bone was thrilled rose gardens and dahlias would resume flourishing across the region.
Members had battled to keep their favourite flowers thriving during the drought and water restrictions, she said.
“We’ve had 15 to 20 years of drought, really, so we’ve found people have become more frugal with the amount of water they use because of the expense.”
Ms Bone said most members relied on installing tanks and using “grey” water.
But she feared that a trend to large houses on small blocks was a bigger threat to the future of traditional backyard gardens.
“They’re going to be sorry they’re not catering for a nice bit of a green look about their places.”
