Top End Gardening a start - How much does it cost to start a garden?

Where do I start, why does it seem so expensive, and what the hell is an ecosystem?

Aglaonema, Schismaglottis, Calathea and other assorted shade plants which can be used easily in Top End Gardens

This is the 'where the hell do I start' post we all need to read sometimes for a little bit of perspective.

We all know there is an abundance of information in the world for temperate gardeners, Mediterranean gardeners, or even desert gardening, but just as the Top End or Darwin region is a unique and distinct place to live, Top End Gardening offers its own unique challenges. This is our attempt to help you out, with a bit of advice, information, and methods that have worked for us, and many of our friends, customers, industry friends and community in general.

We are going to start with a simple concept, and that is ‘how much do I need to spend to make a great garden?’ Because if you watch gardening and home renovation shows, this question might be scaring the crap out of you right now, with their budgets in the tens of thousands (sometimes hundreds), huge amounts of machinery and teams of people wandering around unloading trucks full of massive plants. But this doesn’t have to be your reality, there is absolutely no need to spend your dinner budget for the next 15 years establishing your garden, unless of course you have that money to spend, in which case please do take note of the address and pop in to see us! For those of us who don’t have that kind of disposable income, it is possible to do it cheaply or within your means at any rate. The real key here is balancing your disposable income with your time, which one do you have more of, and how you want to spend both.

Starting a garden should begin with understanding what you have already. If you have just moved into an existing house and garden, you need to become familiar with your surrounds, and how it might work within your perfect garden. There is a temptation to slash and burn your way through the existing planting and remove everything that doesn’t work with the picture in your head. However, this can be very detrimental to the overall health of the garden, as you may find you are exposing sun sensitive plants to conditions they won’t tolerate, not to mention the downside to clearing land, even small parcels within a small suburban block, in that you lose organic matter, mycorrhizal fungi, good bacteria, and insect life that were all helping with your composting and general soil health. This is integral to having a good ecosystem which at its core, is the network of life that forms your garden, no life, no garden. So, get to know what you have and how it could be improved, before removing anything, because while a quick decision can be a good thing, doing it without all the information can backfire.

Simple ways to get to know your garden include –

• Spend time in it – Different times of the day may look different, so spend some time getting to know your garden. It's alive, and sometimes your garden supports other lives. We may not love all of our wildlife or critters, but they are essential parts of the ecosystem, and you should know what you may be changing.

• Identify the plants you have – Understand whether your plants are healthy and do they benefit from pruning. A good prune can turn a plant from a leggy mess into a beautiful ball of flowers or foliage. Sometimes a quick haircut will restore balance and proportion and turn what seemed like an unmanageable mess into a lovely tropical oasis.

• Understand your conditions – What is your soil structure like? Do you have a good level of organic matter? Is it free draining or do you have clay which will pool in the wet season? Does the shade move with the seasons? Our sun does move, we do find some areas will be more sun exposed in the dry or wet season, and dry season sun hurts our plants, so we need to know where it hits.

You can gain a lot of knowledge just by spending time in an environment, it is interesting how often we speak to customers who thought they didn’t know what was going on, but as you ask questions, they realise they knew these things, they just didn’t know how it affected their garden. Its also good to know you don’t need to spend this time in your garden in a vacuum, visit other gardens, see what is similar or different to yours, spend time in parks, walking the street in your neighbourhood, check out the botanical gardens, and most importantly, visit a range of nurseries. Take photos of things you like, get them identified, Google Lens or search by image can be useful for this, or go and see a nursery, they can tell you what it could be (depending on your skill with a camera), or take you for a wander to see if anything looks like it. We can also recommend alternatives if that particular plant is not quite right for your conditions.

The same goes for a new build or a completely bare garden, even though you don’t have existing growth, you need to understand how the sun moves, what the soil is like and the space you are working with. Is that strip down the side of the house 1 metre or 4 metres wide? Do you want to be able to walk down there, or maybe push a trailer down the side of the house? Will you have kids who will ride a bike through the space? Does the soil drain well, or does water pool on the top? Have you set up irrigation, or dug a hole to see what the soil is like underneath? Sometimes our new builds have great soil and sometimes, not so much, so having an idea of what you are working with will make a huge difference.

The next important thing to know is you don’t start with plants, that is a great way to waste money. First you need to start by bringing the ground to life. This can involve compost, mulch, water, and fertiliser in varying degrees, but is generally going to be a combination of all of them irrespective of the location or state of the garden. All Top End gardens are lacking in organic content, due to the age of our country and our monsoon climate. We are also often low in soluble elements, like Potassium, Phosphorous, and Magnesium, however we are generally well supplied with Nitrogen in the wet season due to lightning and storms.

Now if you have got this far, you may be asking where does this help me save money? Like many things, knowledge gives you the power to make informed decisions, and allows you to choose plants in a way that can save you time and money. Do you need to spend big money on advanced plants to get immediate satisfaction? Not really, you could put all advanced specimens in the ground, and have them sit and look at you for the next 12 months with no growth at all, because you didn’t take the time to create the best environment for them to continue to grow. Or you could budget your money for soil preparation and smaller plants and have them grow to the perfect size in a shorter time span. We have the luxury of a fantastic growth rate here in the Top End, so feed your plants and they will reward you with much greater growth than you can expect anywhere else in Australia.

Plant size is important to your budget, optimise your choices for the best bang for your buck. If you want to create a hedge, get 10 smaller plants, feed them well, and you may get better results. Sometimes buying a densely stocked bulb plant in a larger size is worth the money, as you can divide and plant a larger space. Buying a larger pot of Heliconia means the rhizome can be split into several plants to fill a space, instead of buying several smaller pots. A smaller shrub can be shaped to your preference, or a larger one can be used for propagation.

Many tropical plants popular in the Top End can be grown easily by layering or cutting propagation, and some by seed, so it’s not necessary to buy dozens of the same plant. If you’re patient, you can buy a few and grow the rest yourself. Get a Croton in every colour you love, and make some more for later if you want to, or Hibiscus, or Crinum, Caladium, Alocasia, Xanthostemon the list is endless, and it can be fun. Then if you have your heart set on that one special plant, a collector’s item with a ridiculous price tag, you can justify it because you have invested in cheap and cheerful plants elsewhere, that you can propagate yourself.

It is also useful to shop around: we are a little lazy on that front sometimes, we have gotten used to looking for things online without visiting shops and honestly when we are talking about shopping centres, I personally couldn’t think of anything worse, so I get it. But plant shopping really is something that needs to be about all the senses. We can look at a picture online and decide this is perfect, but does this give you a sense of the smell of the foliage, or a flower, or even perspective of size? I don’t have the words to describe the smell of La Lot when you touch it, or how it tastes, or the difference between the scent of a Brunfelsia americana flower during the day to how it is at night. Trying to describe the the bronze sheen on the underside of a Burma Torch leaf as opposed to a Red Torch, or the tangy crunch of a Costus ginger flower when you eat it? It just doesn’t work online, you need to see, touch and feel for yourself. So visit all the nurseries, the community plant group sales and events, join a community garden, go to fete’s, check out the markets, there are so many places to buy plants, and sometimes you will find something special. We have often found collectors items or rare plants at market stalls, or just something precious we used to have in the garden and lost track of.

At this point you may ask why we are telling you this and potentially costing ourselves a client? The answer is simple: gardening is not a process with a beginning and an end, it is circular. Nurseries have customers who have been visiting them the entire time they have been in operation, gardeners may look after a garden for 20 plus years, and a designer or advice giver is always going to have something to offer, and personally I am always going to want to help, even if it just earns me a cup of coffee.

We are not here because we want to be millionaires, definitely the wrong industry for that, and what kind of holistic gardener would I be if I didn't want to help others. So we will be honest, we won’t just tell you what you want to hear or sell you something because we can. We will give you advice, a recommendation based on years of knowledge, and send you on your way to hopefully help another gardener.

At the end of the day, remember nothing worthwhile is easy, and nothing grows without a little bit of love and effort, whether you contribute to that indirectly through money to pay someone else, or do it yourself, it is your sweat that makes it happen.