I’ve just returned from a few days in Townsville, getting my hands dirty working beside the team of landscape contractors as we completed a very special garden for a renovated Queenslander home on the hills overlooking the Coral Sea and Magnetic Island. The garden still looks very new but with keen gardeners as clients, I was able to use a huge range of plants ranging from the white Bat Plant (Tacca integrifolia) to my ever favourite Bloomfield Penda (Xanthostemon verticillatus) and the new variegated River Reed (Lomandra ‘Stripey White’).
Exciting too to try some new products – hand-made Moroccan tiles and copper lotus lilies in yet another different water feature – my current favourite hobby – a different water feature for every project!
It’s been a dream month for my landscape projects as optimism about the future of the economy in Cairns, Townsville and Far North Queensland starts to gain momentum. I have had great customers both in commercial and residential projects this month who have been involved in the design process and have also engaged me to help source and even place plants exactly where I have dreamt they should go and worked with great landscape contractors and builders who go the extra mile to please the customers and me. It is a pleasure to see that landscape plans, once seen as a necessary evil to satisfy planning requirements, are now valued for the profits they can add to a project.
In Cairns I have been working with a developer and his team whose passion for getting the landscape right seems to be even more serious than mine. There has been no limits in the search to find the right quality and size of plants for the project and the cooperation of everyone on this project will probably have spoilt me for a long time to come.
If there was an award for the best clients and projects for April it would be a difficult contest to judge. Professional photos to follow once the plants have settled in a little.