Jennifer Stackhouse

I am watching wattlebirds, parrots and a flock of silvereyes having fun in my fruit trees. They are feeding on the ripening apples with a lot of flashing wings and bird chatter. All fruit trees and shrubs are bird-attracting plants but these are the very plants we don’t want the birds to find attractive. Luckily the apple crop is so...

When it looks like there’s something amiss with a garden or indoor plant, most gardeners reach for a cure in the form of a plant spray. But there are lots organisms that affect plant health so there is no one solution fits all. To be able to select the right type chemical to apply to cure a plant’s ailments, it...

Pick up almost any bag of fertiliser and the three letters ‘NPK’ will be listed as major ingredients. You may have to think back to high school chemistry to recall that these letters stand for the elements called nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. These are the three major elements needed to fuel basic plant growth. While most fertilisers contain these three...

  Kind people tell you it’s only a mistake if you make it twice. Others say we learn from our mistakes. But even with these words of comfort, it’s better to avoid making mistakes in the first place. 1. Hold the secateurs Pruning at the wrong time of the year, or at the wrong point in a plant’s growth cycle...

Autumn is harvest time in the garden. Crops from orchards and kitchen gardens are all maturing and ripening in the long warm days. Here in my kitchen I am surrounded with buckets of tomatoes, quite a few cabbages and the normal over abundance of zucchini. As well we have apples and pears ripening and armloads of mint. And a neighbour...

Autumn is all about colour, as trees that have been green and lush all summer long reveal new and flamboyant personalities. Expect to enjoy flame-coloured leaves on maples, burgundy and red on grapevines and yellow on ash trees, while crepe myrtles have their own cascades of yellow and gold. The plants that put on these amazing leaf colours are deciduous...

Trailing plants combine function with beauty. They cascade over an edge, spread across the ground or tumble from a pot or hanging basket, softening hard edges and adding colour and texture. Without the softening touch of a trailing plant, garden edges, paths, the sides of steps and many containers could look stark and bare. As well as softening the scene...

Leaves are the plant’s powerhouse. They capture sunlight and using chlorophyll, the enzyme that makes leaves green, turn it into sugars to fuel growth. The transformation is known as photosynthesis and it is a fundamental part of life on earth. Although all plants carry out photosynthesis a myriad of leaf types have evolved. Some are big, some are small, some shiny...

The flamboyant flowers of hibiscus (Hibiscus rosa-sinensis) light up summer gardens. They are such generous shrubs, unfurling new flowers day after day so there’s always something bold and colourful to enjoy amid the dense green of our summer gardens. With flowers in tones of red, pink, yellow, orange and even purple, and bearing single or double petal structures, choosing a...

Being on holidays during summer is more than just having time off. It’s about soaking up the laid back atmosphere of summer: spending time sitting under a shady tree, lounging beside a pool, chilling at a holiday house or zoning out at a lush resort. The plants that surround you become part of the summer holiday and can be the...