Good Gardening Ways Podcast

In Episode 3 of Apple Blossom Farm Stories, we continue our walking tour, one garden room at a time, stepping through a cream-painted arbour into the shade garden, where a layered canopy of elms, maples, and silver birches shelters hellebores, ferns, and a three-pond watercourse. From there, a narrow path leads into the densely planted woodland walk, the property's most diverse area, where repeated groundcovers stitch the garden together, snakebark maples reward close inspection, and a prized Huon pine stump stands as a natural sculpture. We end at the threshold of the grand entrance, looking back at how these two garden rooms share a love of filtered light but offer very different experiences.

The Metal Arbour and the Antique Perennial Garden

In Episode 2 of Apple Blossom Farm Stories, Jason continues the audio garden tour from The Green and leads listeners through one of the most loved areas of Apple Blossom Farm — the handcrafted Metal Arbour and the Antique Perennial Garden.

The episode begins where Episode 1 finished, on The Green, before moving towards the ten-metre-long Metal Arbour. This one-of-a-kind structure was hand-crafted by a local blacksmith and is now softened by clematis climbing each upright, vigorous bush roses called ‘Adorable’ on either side, and prostrate Verbena ‘Polaris Mauve’ spilling along the path.

From there, the walk enters the Antique Perennial Garden — a richly planted garden room filled with old wagon wheel rims, clematis, roses, white and blue delphiniums, irises, pines, dark-leafed elderberries, Chinese Toon, tree peonies, Monarda, Chinese ground orchids and a fountain that draws the eye through the whole space.

Jason shares how this path began as a practical gardener’s access track before becoming one of the most beautiful walks in the garden. Along the way, he reflects on structure, repetition, foliage contrast, seasonal change, and the way a garden can slowly reveal what it wants to become.

This episode is part garden tour, part design lesson, and part love letter to the quiet details that make a garden feel alive.

In this episode:

* The role of The Green as a pause between garden rooms

* The story of the handcrafted Metal Arbour

* Clematis, ‘Adorable’ roses and Verbena ‘Polaris Mauve’

* How old wagon wheel rims became living garden frames

* Why the Antique Perennial Garden is designed to be walked through, not just viewed from the edge

* The importance of pines, conifers and foliage contrast in a perennial garden

* Dark Tower elderberries and the pink spring foliage of the Chinese Toon

* The fountain, hidden water bore gate and practical beauty in a working garden

* Why good gardens are built step by step, path by path, and decision by decision

Episode length: 28 minutes 53 seconds

Every Friday, Jason also writes the Good Gardening Ways newsletter, sharing practical gardening advice, stories from Apple Blossom Farm and ideas to help you create a garden you love.

Join the newsletter at goodgardeningways.com

Welcome to the very first episode of Good Gardening Ways – The Podcast.

In this opening episode, I invite you through the gates of Apple Blossom Farm, our three-acre garden in the hills of southern Tasmania, and introduce you to the place that Janette and I have spent the past 25 years creating.

We'll walk through some of the garden rooms, meet some of the plants and features that give them their character, and explore the ideas that have shaped the garden along the way.

But this podcast isn't simply about our garden.

Through the stories of Apple Blossom Farm—the things that worked, the things that didn't, and what the garden has taught us—I hope to share ideas and practical lessons that you can take back into your own garden.

This first episode sets the scene.

In the episodes ahead, we'll open the old photo albums and go right back to the beginning: to the property we first saw in 2001, the decisions we made, the mistakes we made, and how an ordinary piece of land gradually became Apple Blossom Farm.

Come and take a walk with me.