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GARDEN CENTRES and NURSERIES.
Garden centres and retail nurseries sell a lot more than plants, pots and planters, fertilizers, outdoor lighting with many garden centres water features are also a standard item.
In many garden centres you will also have trained horticulturalists who are able to provide expert advice that relate to local conditions, the closer to where you live the more local the knowledge and advice.
Our State guide to Garden Centres lists some of the more interesting retail nurseries in Australia. Turners Garden Centre and Nursery in QLD may be small, but what a huge range of plants, with fruit trees being a speciality. In Perth, check out Lena Nursery and Garen Centre for an excellent selection of Fruit Trees.
Garden designer Jill Weatherhead gives us an insight into water features and their place in the garden. Many available from your local Garden Centre.
WATER FEATURES IN THE GARDEN
Jill Weatherhead
In our hot climate, water features are becoming very popular in our gardens. They refresh and cool us, give us visual and sound interest, and remind us of an oasis. The early Persian and Moorish gardens followed the ancient Egyptian style where a garden was quartered by two canals and trees were planted to provide shade. Larger gardens contained many intersecting canals.
Persian gardens had water rills which were in straight lines as these were easier to make. They were lined with colourful tiles; and formed the basis for the formal garden style to follow for so many centuries. These walled gardens contained pavilions and had a brief season of a wealth of spring flowers, but with the heat of summer, visual interest was provided by the colorful tiles and fowl such as peacocks.
Today's courtyards and gardens may be enriched with a water feature. These range from the latest water walls and classical fountains, spouting pipes which pour water into a small reservoir, to the rarer shallow rill which can fascinate children and adults alike. Pools may have stepping stones - informal rocks as in Gordon Ford's naturalistic garden to formal square pavers in straight lines. Crossing a pool like this brings out the child in us.
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