Gympie green thumbs show off their beau­ti­ful gar­den

GAR­DEN­ERS will take home use­ful in­for­ma­tion and at­trac­tive ideas af­ter their visit to Joyce and Mor­rie Shanks’s res­i­dence on Silky Oak Dr, Nahrunda, on Satur­day.

An in­ter­est­ing sign, Orana, the name of the Shanks’s suc­cess­ful re­tail nurs­ery at Eu­mundi from 1973 to 1991, po­si­tioned near the prop­erty’s en­trance means “wel­come”.

The own­ers are the largest prop­a­ga­tors of bougainvil­leas in the Sun­shine Coast re­gion, and, us­ing this knowl­edge, they re­cently prop­a­gated their mag­no­lias us­ing an air lay­er­ing tech­nique.

Firstly you need to gather all the nec­es­sary ma­te­ri­als: a sharp knife, a tooth­pick, honey or root­ing hor­mone, wa­ter, sphag­num moss, cling film and twist ties.

Us­ing the sharp knife, start by cut­ting half- way through the stem, and hold­ing this open with a tooth­pick by adding ei­ther honey or root­ing hor­mone to the wounded stem, which will help to grow roots.

This area is then sur­rounded with moist sphag­num moss that has been soaked in wa­ter and squeezed to re­move ex­cess mois­ture. Fol­low this by wrapping the moss with plas­tic to keep ev­ery­thing in its place.

Both ends must be fas­tened very se­curely us­ing the ties in or­der to main­tain mois­ture as this takes about 12 months be­fore you get the op­por­tu­nity to wit­ness growth in the moss ac­cord­ing to Joyce.

The horti-cul­tur­al­ist finds this ex­er­cise to be one of her most re­ward­ing and sat­is­fy­ing ex­pe­ri­ences as mag­no­lia gran­di­flora, also com­monly known as the south­ern mag­no­lia or bull bay, is her favourite plant.

Mor­rie, on the other hand, has done a won­der­ful job of mak­ing dif­fer­ent seats and po­si­tion­ing them throughout the gor­geous gar­den with the lat­est in­ven­tion be­ing gabion seats.

The rec­tan­gle welded mesh box is placed on a slab of con­crete, and this is filled with rocks from their gar­den with an­other slab of con­crete placed on top to form the seat.

Take par­tic­u­lar notice when walk­ing through Joyce’s gar­den that her var­ie­gated jacaranda tree is not dy­ing nor is it sickly as this nat­u­rally has yel­low- green leaves and pur­ple flow­ers.

PHOTO: CON­TRIB­UTED

PRIDE AND JOY: Joyce and Mor­rie Shanks in their gar­den, which will host a vis­it­ing day at the week­end.

Best dressed at last year’s hor­ti­cul­ture so­ci­ety Christ­mas party were Co­ral Ernst and Bob Ab­bott. Mem­bers will again don their best fes­tive out­fits for this year’s Christ­mas lunch on Novem­ber 24.

Joyce and Mor­rie Shanks were happy to stand be­neath their wel­come sign.