Country Charm

It's lovely to see what our customers do with our products. These pictures show a great country garden using our water feature as a focal point. Owner Shane plans to use a solar powered pump to create the gentle sound of running water. We must add that we love the retro bench and old wicker chairs under the veranda and what a view!

 

Look out for our story on how to use water in the garden in the December issue of South Australian Garden and Outdoor Living Magazine.

The stylists garden:

We rave about this climbing rose a lot and here it appears on the blog yet again. Pierre de Ronsard is one of the most beautiful cupped shaped roses with a mix of cream and pink petals. We took a sneak peak into the courtyard of stylist Monica Wills. A vintage gate panel has been re purposed into a wall art/ trellis and the climbing rose graces it perfectly.

She sells seashells by the sea shore

Drift wood tables and clear, white and pastel blue gift ware.

Lot's of hand made shell decorations.

Explore the wagon shed for an affordable yet stylish gift.

On the Mauve

Find purple fashion, purple hand painted cow bells and mauve throw rugs at Serenity Nursery now.



Pictured here: An espaliered Amethyst falls wisteria, standard lavender and statice all featured in our lovely café style pots.

 

 

Look out for these purple flowering plants now:

 

Statice, lavender, climbing wisteria, polygalas, echium, petunias,

 spreading bacopa and spreading calibrachoa.

 

 

 

What's in the old wagon shed?

Timber dice stool/ coffee table. Aluminium and timber coffee rest and hand made throws.

Rust garden sculptures, heuchera plants and phormiums ( NZ flax)

Hand made gifts, Multi coloured floor rugs and faux cacti.

New Summer fashion and necklaces. Rope dogs and crafty handbags made from fabric and leather.

Trendy folding stools.

The old wagon shed full of on trend goodies.

The blue room

Serenity Nursery Home and Garden wares

Serenity Nursery gorgeous patio settings

 

Serenity Nursery new "blue room"- No more red walls!!!

 

One thing we try to always do is surprise and delight our customers. We had a purple and grey painted room which was painted red about three years ago. Everyone loved "the red room" and we mostly decorated it with Asian style pieces. Well this week we thought out with the old and in with the new. We pained the walls of the red room a pretty pale blue and we love it. It's fresh, summery and bright. Pop in and have a look how we decorated it...our theme was "no theme" and we have mixed french style chairs with modern metal home wares and our very popular multicoloured side board tables.

Enjoy.

 

A visit to Mum and Dad's garden...

 Have a look at Mum and Dad's garden (Above). Well this is just one section of the garden that they have worked on over the last couple of years. I really like what they have done with a simple metal arbour from our garden centre. They painted the arbour black along with this solid wrought iron urn. Mum and Dad chose a wisteria to cover the arbour. The purple and black is an unexpected combination and actually looks quite striking. The vigorous wisteria climber flowers during the warmer months and in winter sheds it's leave to reveal a woven bare vine.

 

A variety of deciduous trees surround the arbour and a large lawn area. What an excellent spot for a private get together.



 

 

Wisteria Amethyst Falls

 

What's this? Wisteria Amethyst Falls. It is an American variety of wisteria that is a well behaved variety, not as invasive and more compact then the Asian varieties more commonly grown.

Masses of deep lilac coloured flowers are produced on shorter than usual racemes giving a fuller effect. Flowering begins in spring with repeat flushes throughout summer. Can be trained to climb posts or trellis or in the garden bed can be left to trail over retaining walls, rockeries or embankments.

Available now.

 

 

 



Chelsea Flower Show 2013 Winners...



A large Xanthorrhoea ( also known as a grass tree) Makes an amazing feature.



Natural elements have been selected. Timber, stone and bamboo enhance the green life.





A curved timber walkway leads the eye around the garden.



Simply Beautiful!

 

The talented team of Flemings Nursery.

Congratulations to Flemings Nursery for winning Best in Show for their garden design at the 2013 Chelsea Flower Show. I thought I would share the talent of this team with you and hope you like it as much as we do. We are proud stockists of Flemings trees so look out for them at Serenity very soon.

Enjoy

The Serenity Team

xx

A little bit about the garden:

Designed by Phillip Johnson, this garden reminds us that nature is the perfect reference for sustainable design, imperative in the twenty first century.

The focal points of the landscape are the Billabong, gorge and waterfalls, as well as the Studio perched on the edge of the gorge. The Studio roof includes solar panels with the capacity to generate enough power for the whole landscape.

Strolling through the garden...

How lovely it is to see our customers take pride in their gardens. Our customer Helen Rodda  has built her magnificent garden up with large Shade trees, lovely flowering perennials and box hedging.

Helen's garden is called " Camelot Garden Stroll"and is situated at Kadina on South Australia's York Peninsula. Helen's Garden was open to the public in October and attracted over 300 people and helped raise funds for the local cancer council. Well done Helen, what a beautiful garden.

Take a look at the wonderful photos Helen sent into us...

Teak Garden Sculpture Balls from Serenity Nursery where strategically placed in a section of the garden.

Helen said "Everyone fell in love with them".  Comments like “Who made them”,  “Where did you get them from”,  “ I’ve got to have some of them”, to ‘I’ve never seen anything like them before” kept coming all the time.

Serenity Nursery's statue of Rose is enveloped by blooming roses and a metal garden arch.

Small wooden hearts from Serenity Nursery hang from the weeping mulberry tree.

Helen put together this nostalgic little nook. An old washer, washboard and basket

 complete the quirky display.

What's in store?

 

New in for Christmas:

 

Don't worry be happy metal signs.

 

Our teak deer head wall mounts are back ( as featured in Real Living Magazine)

 

Lots of wall art including a variety of tree designs from $30.

 

Teak furniture for outdoors.

 

Hyathins patio settings.

 

Too much to mention, pop in for a visit and see for yourself.

 

Krystal

xx

 



 

Gardens for Horses...

First of all we designed the garden in the nursery by teaming different plants around the ball sculptures. Some of the plants we used included dark purple cannas, silver foliage succulents, yellow banana split yuccas, dark foliage blazed dianellas and flap jack succulents. We then watered them well, spayed the foliage with a heat protectant and loaded them onto the truck for the journey to Adelaide.

 

Man Power. Lucky my Hubby and Dad were here to do all of the heavy lifting. Here you can see the horse jumps in the background.

We discussed with the officials where the display could be positioned. With water pipes below, a camera crew and leaping horses, we couldn't be complacent about the positioning.

 

I position the plants...the fun part. I just love designing gardens and love the contrast between different foliage's. The soft grey foliage of the frosty top lomandra combines

 well with the structured succulents.

 A couple of cranes in the centre makes the display near complete.

 

 



 

I really liked this part of the display. We used English box at varying heights around the obelisk and placed a topiary cone box in the centre.

 



Finally all of the plants were covered in mulch. Over the 3 days the canna lillies flowered and it was great to see the beautiful horses galloping around our display.

What an incredible opportunity we were given to supply plants for the International 3 day horse event held on the edge of Adelaide city at Rymill park. We were also offered an area of the track to design and install a garden. We used our unique teak garden balls and teak obelisk and installed plants around them for an eye catching display. Our display was set right amongst the horse jumps and was was greatly appreciated by visitors to the park.

Amazing Style Issue!

Wow! Our Teak Deer Head wall mount is featured in this months (August 2012) Real Living magazine- The amazing style issue!

Editor Deborah Bibby featured it in The Editors letter and said "The timber deer head is another classic and this piece is more affordable; in fact, it's a bargain buy! ( I hope that our finance whiz Mark Bouris is not reading this or I'm in trouble.)

Thanks Deborah. We love it when people see value in our items and their originality. We are Very happy and humbled to see one of our products in your magazine. xx

A modern statement with Aloe Trees.

This garden is amazing. The architectural trees emerging from the decking are aloe trees and we actually have these available at  the nursery and they also grow well in large pots. Surrounding the over sized concrete slabs are cordylines, agave's and a variety of succulents. In the top picture you can see the blue chalk stick succulent, which is a low growing blue statement plant.

The garden accessories are bang on. Love the stark white swing chair, table and single seat.

 This garden works because there is a variety of flooring materials used. Timber and concrete slabs in varying sizes combined with earthy mulch add texture add interest. varying the levels in the garden is a great way to a sense of style to a small space.

Enjoy. Krystal

Image via Real Living Magazine

Beat the winter blues!

Geranium " Big Red" in a hanging basket in the garden centre today.

For a splash of colour this winter don't go past Geranium "Big Red". It's a compact hybrid geranium and is said to be the first true deep red geranium around. The flowers are huge and will inject colour into any garden large or small. Ideal to hang from a veranda , plant in pots or use as a flowering hedge. "Big Red" will flower for you just about all year round just make sure it is positioned in a sunny spot.

First image here

Step on it.

My front garden is very simple with low growing hedging box plants and a couple of patches of flat mulch. The mulch is fine as it allows the rain to penetrate into the ground and water the plants around it.I have been thinking about amping up the style and filling the mulch voids with some large format pavers and planting some low growing plants in between.

I found these images that gave me some inspiration...

I like this idea as environmentally it allows water to go in between each paver. Don't rule out using pebbles in between pavers either. Pebbles can act as a mulch by retaining moister in the ground and suppress weeds.

I plan on using the pavers  hand made at Serenity Nursery, they are 500mmx 500mm which is a large format paver and looks great in a small space.

Low growing plants that work well in between pavers:

Dichondra

Creeping Thyme

Dwarf mondo grass

Liriope

Trailing Succulents

Baby tears