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Mad About Grevilleas with Binchy
138 Plays1 month ago
Horticulturalist David Binch, is deeply passionate about Grevilleas. He runs Binchy's Garden in Dalyston, Victoria, known for its large collection of rare and endangered Grevillea species. Binchy is an expert Grevillea grafter. Take some time to step into Binchy's world with me, Lets nerd out over Grevilleas
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Episode Links:
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Binchy's Youtube - @binchys_garden
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Overview
00:00:08
Speaker
Step into the gardener's lodge with me, Michael Hoare. Let's explore the fascinating world of gardening, nature and ecology through conversations with experts, thought leaders, passionate enthusiasts, and of course, some real good friends, all from the cozy heart of the lodge.
00:00:25
Speaker
Come on in.
00:00:28
Speaker
The Gardener's Lodge podcast is created on the traditional lands of the Darug and Gundungara people in the Blue Mountains. We pay respect to all First Nations elders, past and present.
00:00:40
Speaker
Welcome to the show. My guest today is David Binch, Binchies Garden on Instagram. Now, David is a fascinating character. He's been a horticulturalist for 20 years and he is hyper-focused on grevilleas, which is exactly why I wanted to chat to him today.
00:00:59
Speaker
I think grevilleas are some of the most iconic plants Australia has to offer. They're certainly up there with, you know, your eucalypts or your banksias or plants like that. When you think of Australian native plants, particularly Australian native flowers, you definitely think of grevilleas.
00:01:15
Speaker
There is thousands of different varieties and um David is an enthusiast and a collector. He is a part of a wide network of Grevillea grafters and Grevillea collectors. They swap and share plant material. He's been very generous with his time and he's going to depart as much of his Grevillea information onto us as possible.
David's Journey into Horticulture
00:01:40
Speaker
But first, you know what time it is. David will answer six rapid fire questions so that you can get to know him just that little bit better. Are you ready? Okay, yeah here we go. So favorite plant?
00:01:52
Speaker
Grevillea Canin classic. What's your favorite way to connect with nature? Bush walking. Most beautiful garden or landscape you've ever visited? The Grampians National Park.
00:02:05
Speaker
Yeah. Favourite garden tool? Secateurs. If you could be one, would you be a plant or an animal? A native animal, a native Australian animal.
00:02:16
Speaker
Nice. And then when you're looking for research... Where do you go to find the most reliable sound information? I check ah check many sources, so I don't just check the one thing. So ah first I'll go to one of my tried and true books, but then there might be updated information on the internet.
00:02:38
Speaker
So then I'll search the internet as well and I'll sort of, I'll search a few different places to get that um and then I'll weigh up the answer and pick pick it Tell me about how you fell in love with gardening and then how you actually kind of ended up with a career in horticulture.
00:02:55
Speaker
It was bit of an interesting way that I sort of fell fell into horticulture. i was I used to run mum and dad's general store at Smith's Beach on Phillip Island.
00:03:08
Speaker
So i used to ride my bike down to the shop to go to work every day. I used to see this older fella out in his garden, he had a grey beard and he was always in the front and we'd always you know sing out, how going mate? And whatever, as was riding past and looked like he was turning over the soil with a shovel.
00:03:30
Speaker
And one day I just thought stuff this, ah a stoped and I and said, what are you, what are you up to, mate What are you doing? And he said, I'm just turning over the soil because it was heavy, a volcanic red earthy clay.
00:03:45
Speaker
And he was constantly turning it over. Eventually I found out that he had a real obsessive compulsive disorder and yeah, a lot of anxiety.
00:03:58
Speaker
And I've, I've got a lot of those type of traits. I've always dealt with a bit of anxiety and a bit of obsessive compulsion type things myself. So I just sort of seem to connect with people like that.
00:04:13
Speaker
So anyway, we stopped and he took me, he took me, showed me around his garden. And at this stage, I wasn't into horticulture or plants or anything. And he was just a really friendly bloke. I was about 24, 25, and he was about 50.
00:04:31
Speaker
One day, all of a sudden, he just dropped dead. He passed away. Oh. And um it was like overnight I became interested in plants. Wow.
00:04:44
Speaker
I felt as though I could feel his spirit there urging me to to plant all these Australian native plants, as many as I could, all of a sudden. Like this is soon after this guy died. Yeah, it was...
00:04:58
Speaker
Yeah, something I couldn't control. so so yeah, that's how I got
Mastering Grevillea Grafting
00:05:03
Speaker
into it. It's sort of a bit weird, but that's... It is an interesting story. I'll give you that. it's certainly one of the more unique kind of entries into gardening, but no, that's great. um and And then you turned it into a career?
00:05:17
Speaker
For five years, I started to um ah just ah started to try and propagate my own plants with not much luck. working down the shop one day, we had used to have this older fella.
00:05:32
Speaker
We started talking about plants and he said, what about grafting? Have you ever heard about grafting? I said, no, what but the bloody hell that?
00:05:43
Speaker
All this. I thought, geez, yeah, this this sounds interesting. And he goes, you should should look that up and give it a try sometime. So then I used to go with him. We used to go to nurseries all over the place and he wanted to fill his garden full of native plants. So we were going to big nursery sales.
00:06:03
Speaker
He had a six-wheel ah troopy. He was a real eccentric fellow fella and he used to put run it on fish and chip oil, his car. but we used it we went I'll never forget, we went to one of these nurseries. so He said, I'll have all the banksias, all the grevilleas.
00:06:20
Speaker
So we've gone and loaded them up and he had a big roof rack on the top of this troopie and we're tying banksias on top of the bloody roof and just going crazy with um with plants. it was It was pretty cool.
00:06:34
Speaker
and so yeah So then I helped him do a bit of planting at his place but the obsession just kept growing and growing. So then I got a hold of, um i bought I bought the Grevillea books written by Neil Marriott and Peter Oldey. They got some grafting information in there.
00:06:51
Speaker
And I thought, I want to give this this grafting a bit of a go. um Everyone I tried to ask, I tried to ask people from nurseries who I knew and they wouldn't tell me anything about it.
00:07:03
Speaker
Yeah, so it was like a real kept secret. So I couldn't find yeah much information. information i thought but I thought, this really sucks, you know. so So and I don't stop.
00:07:14
Speaker
I don't stop it until I get what I want sometimes with this type of thing. And I wanted that input i wanted this information um and I was going to go to all lengths to get it.
00:07:28
Speaker
I subscribed to the Burke's Backyard magazine at the time. And I also thought, bugger this, I'm going to email him because he was one of the pioneers in in Australia.
00:07:39
Speaker
with um grafting Grevilleas. Six weeks later, I received an email and I thought, what's this? And I opened it up and it was a full detailed letter ah from him.
00:07:50
Speaker
And he said, sorry. yeah He told me everything I needed to know, like who to go and see to find out some more information, ah great what type of grafts, what time of year to do it, fertilizers to use to help pump the rootstock up to to get it to grow faster, full of information.
00:08:10
Speaker
And that's when I started to have a little bit of success. I was very thankful for that. So my first graft was a Approach graft.
00:08:22
Speaker
So it's where you, so at the time I'd grown a Grevillea Robusta. I grew one up about, don't know, two foot high. And I remember I had a Grevillea Bronze Rambler.
00:08:37
Speaker
you know, how it's a prostrate plant with the branches spreading out. And i had like this drop. Yeah, I had like this retaining wall at the back of my house and ah raised up area.
00:08:49
Speaker
And I put the bronze rambler in the pot on the top part of the raised area and I had the but two foot long rootstock of the Robusta down below and I put a little slit in each, um took took a little slither slither of bark off the Robusta and a little slither of bark off the inside of the branch of the Greville, a bronze rambler, connected them together where both wounds are and then type taped them up with parafilm tape.
00:09:24
Speaker
And from what he told me, he said it can take anywhere from six weeks to three months to heal. Anyway, sure enough, couple of months went by and I noticed the branches really starting to grow on top.
The Iconic Nature of Grevilleas
00:09:39
Speaker
And so i cut a bit of the tape and I thought, oh, I could see it all callusing. so was all callusing around the wound. And so I cut it off and there you go. There was me first little mini stand-in.
00:09:52
Speaker
yeah Yeah. so It's always amazing when you get that first kind of garden success and you just kind of, you know, there's a few things in times in my life when things like that have happened and you just go, this is why I do it. You know, this is, yeah that's the kind of the magic feeling that you feel. you feel almost almost like powerful, you know? yeah Yeah.
00:10:14
Speaker
It's like, it gives you an adrenaline rush almost, doesn't it? Yeah, yeah, yeah, observ what yeah. Like, yeah, I want more of this, you know. Yeah, exactly. And it's just a plant, you know, and we're that excited about it. like but it's Some people might think, oh, that's, you know, boring, but it's not to us. Not to us, not to us.
00:10:34
Speaker
And probably not to the people listening either. so that's No, no, definitely not. So let's dive deep into grevilleas then. Grevilleas are easily one of the most recognisable Aussie native plants.
00:10:49
Speaker
What do you think makes them so iconic? All right. The different shapes and colours of the flowers. So you've got your your classic Greville toothbrush um type flower, large flowers of your Greville moonlight and your Greville superb and Robin Gordon. They've got that unique sort of cylinder sort of shape.
00:11:10
Speaker
Almost like a a cylinder hairbrush kind of thing. Yeah, like the hairbrush. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, okay with the ba yeah. Yeah. It's like you've got Grevillea Robusta, which can grow 30 metres high or however large it can grow. yeah.
00:11:29
Speaker
And then you've got a little suckering, tiny little suckering plant that grows along the ground. Flowers can be very different from each other. You've got little spider flowers, you've got your toothbrush shape, you've got conical round i'd say that it's definitely this you know a grevillea for every situation in australia every different climate has grevillea so i think that's probably why they're so kind of prolifically known i guess um how many different species are there it's recorded 360 but the list keeps just growing because they keep discovering new um species all the time um bet yeah
00:12:11
Speaker
Yeah, which is good. but And they keep changing the names and, yeah, all sorts of things. Well, that's probably a problem, but the DNA testing of everything is kind of just blowing everything out of the water that we once knew about plants and things are getting reclassified and...
00:12:28
Speaker
Yeah. Hey, if you like native plants as much as I do, I have a special treat for you. I've created a free Australian native garden design or planting palette. What it is, is a collection of beautiful Australian native plants that are very adaptable to all different climates within Australia. So if you're stuck with what to plant in your native garden, download your free Australian native garden design.
00:12:53
Speaker
The free download also comes with a bunch of extra information on the steps you'll need to make it flourish. If that sounds like something that you'd like to take advantage of, the link to the free download is in the show notes below this episode.
00:13:06
Speaker
Check it out. So you actually collect rare grevilleas and your whole garden's bloody amazing. like ah thanks, mate. Fantastic. But so, yeah, you're down on the southeast coast of ah Victoria there. Yep.
00:13:21
Speaker
And in your garden is full of rare, wonderful grevilleas. How many grevilleas do you actually have in your collection? Well, I've lost count now. So last, I was up around 200, right? Yeah.
00:13:33
Speaker
right Give or take a few, but I've gained a heap more out there now this season or, well, don't know, maybe another 10 20 maybe this season.
00:13:45
Speaker
ahve been grafting some I've been sent some material from ah Botanic Gardens in New South Wales. Yeah, I've had friends send me plants in the mail. We get plants sent.
00:13:55
Speaker
I get plants sent to me in the mail and I send them. So we... We share and share alike. So I'll send a parcel of cutting material to someone. They send one back and we and then we propagate those plants. So, yeah, so I've gained a few this season.
00:14:10
Speaker
Could you tell us about the diversity of the Grevillea genus? You know, they're found all over Australia. They grow in a million different
Grevilleas and Wildlife Interaction
00:14:20
Speaker
climactic conditions.
00:14:21
Speaker
no But, yeah, tell us a little bit about that diversity. Well, they can be found on um the top of Mount William in the Grampians. It gets minus 10 degrees and the Grevilleas get covered by snow and they can be found in the arid areas in Western Australia in the desert in 40 degree heat day in, day out with poor soil conditions.
00:14:52
Speaker
They grow right near the beach. So they they get but in some areas. So they get spray drift from the ocean. Yeah, they can really adapt in many, many different conditions.
00:15:05
Speaker
You know, you've got your large tropical species and then you've got your little tiny little Little shrubs, you know. Yeah, there's a ah wide range of ah wide range of diversity and growth habits.
00:15:19
Speaker
You know, if you've got a spot in your garden, there's a Grevillea you can fill it with for sure. yeah My favorite is Grevillea arcanthofolia. arcanthofolia. is actually a bog plant. Yeah. We have in the mountains, so I'm in the Blue Mountains, so we have like hanging swamps.
00:15:33
Speaker
Yeah. So it's like these are really wet kind of areas that sort of like water collects and filters through before it kind of ends up off the cliffs and stuff here. Yep. um And it's one of the plants that kind of sits in the margins of that.
00:15:49
Speaker
And it has, it's a deadly though. It's it's got the sharpest, sharpest leaves ever. Yep. You know, you can't try and clean up some leaves from underneath it and you just, it just gets dry straight into your skin. yeah. It has the most beautiful flower.
00:16:03
Speaker
ah love I know a Canthor folia. It's a beautiful plant. Do you grow it? No, ah I actually don't think I've had it, but um they do a lot of hybrids from that plant.
00:16:14
Speaker
um They make a lot of hybrids from it. Due to all these different climactic conditions that they can live in, what are some of the like more interesting adaptations that Grevilleas have made to the Australian environment?
00:16:27
Speaker
They've learned to adapt to really, really dry conditions where yeah they get drought for months on end. And like i've seen plants that almost sort of almost look like they're dead, you know, and then it comes back around to to spring and they somehow manage to come back to life, you know, and then you've got like what you were saying with the acanthorpholia,
00:16:52
Speaker
ah liking, enjoying a little bit of wet feet. But I bet you, did it did it have a bit of drainage? Was that water draining off or was it?
00:17:03
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, for sure, yeah. And, you know, I can grow it in in drier spots. It just prefers like a little bit more moisture through the soil than yeah I'd say your average, you know. You kind of even look at the leaves and whatnot and you see the all the different variations in the leaves. Some of them are quite thick and dense. Some are very like, you know, light and...
00:17:24
Speaker
With grevilleas, that's a huge feature, um well, to me and to most of us who are into grevilleas, is the foliage, the different leaf shapes.
00:17:35
Speaker
the you know the It's amazing the foliage colour. And see, as you were saying there, they've these um plants have adapted along with the wildlife.
00:17:48
Speaker
So they can the wildlife can hide in these in the prickly foliage. kind of evolved with each other. they Yeah, evolved. That's the word I was looking for. Yeah. Yeah, well actually, on that note, but how do grevilleas interact with native wildlife like birds, bees, and and other pollinators?
00:18:05
Speaker
Australian native birds are the main pollinators of grevilleas. So the insects do a bit and and whatnot, but the the birds, they can get their beaks right into the little tube of the flower and they even end up with a bit of pollen just up above their beak and then they carry it over to the, so they get it from say the male, they carry it over to the female um part of the the next flower and then they stick their nose in in there and and there you go. But a lot of the flowers, once again,
00:18:39
Speaker
birds and so these plants evolve with each other and the birds choose the the pinks and red and yellow colour flowers so that so there's more of these type of flower colours with the grevilleas and the but the birds are most partial to those those colours where the insects, the the bees and insects prefer the whiteflower gravi is
Cultivating Grevilleas: Tips and Challenges
00:19:04
Speaker
because the white and the white flower grevilleas send off a certain an odour to attract the the insects and the birds aren't interested in those white flowers.
00:19:15
Speaker
Oh, that's interesting. interesting Yeah, it's very interesting. So I guess the birds that we'd be talking about would have kind of those like long slender beaks, like your spine bills or something like that. Is that right? Yeah.
00:19:26
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, and see their beaks are even so they're all adapted so they can get inside those little flowers and and do their do their job, you know. A group village is self-fertile then?
00:19:37
Speaker
Meaning do they have both the male and the female parts on the on the flower? Yes, yes, they do. They have um both male and female parts to the flowers, yes. You know, the pollinators that do come have much greater kind of chance to pollinate the flower itself um while they're in there. yeah Yeah, that's right.
00:19:56
Speaker
And um they help create um some a lot of interesting hybrids as well in that way. course. Yeah, of course.
00:20:09
Speaker
I mean, yeah i think you've even created some hybrids of your own, haven't you? Yeah, I've got one out there that um was a bit of a bit of a fluke. Yeah. Was it just an accident? Yeah.
00:20:22
Speaker
Well, it was sort of ah an intended accident. So I had, but when we were moving house, I had two Grevilleas that I was taking with me, because well so I had them growing in pots beside each other. So one was Grevillea Superba and the other one was Grevillea Oncogoyne.
00:20:42
Speaker
And they were both roughly a foot and a half high, um similar width, everything, nice plants. And they both flowered at the same time. So I had these plants. So I pushed them right up against the pots, right up against. So the foliage was all intertwined and the flowers were all next to each other.
00:20:59
Speaker
And I'd even go out there and rub the flowers together. And, you know, the birds and the bees were getting around them and that too. And, yeah, I collected, they finished flowering. I collected seeds off one of the plants.
00:21:15
Speaker
and threw them in a pot, grew them. So I lost quite a few, but one was a lot stronger than the rest, one of the little seedlings.
00:21:26
Speaker
So I kept that seedling and grew it up a bit more. Then I grafted it onto Grevillea Robusta. So then... I didn't think much more of it after that.
00:21:39
Speaker
um Years later, planted it out in my garden here where I am. My friend come over and he said, what's that? He said, that's not a um Superba.
00:21:50
Speaker
I said, yeah, it's, oh, no, hang on. it's the I said, it's the, I grew this one from seed and both plants were totally different. So the flowers were shorter and fatter.
00:22:03
Speaker
on my plant where they were longer and spread out and a ah paler colour. I've checked it on this Oncagyni that I've got and um it's got similar features to that plant. So we we've married it up and figured out it's a hybrid.
00:22:19
Speaker
Fantastic. Yeah. yeah My first hybrid or created I've created. I've grown a few others, but they just haven't performed that well. you To have a ah hybrid, you've got to have it perform well. So if you ever want to put it in the nursery trade one day. Yeah, well, I mean, I'm always amazed by plant breeders and how they kind of do like so much work, you know, just to get the perfect kind of crossover. and Yeah, sometimes you can grow...
00:22:51
Speaker
200 plants and you'd have to grow each one until they flower. And they usually, some of them wait some wait seven years and see how that plant performs before you can say that it's a good ah good hybrid. Good sturdy thing ready for sale or whatever, yeah.
00:23:10
Speaker
And another one they say these days has pretty much got to flower for most of the year, which my one out there might flower for three or four months of the year, you know.
00:23:22
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. I find a plant might get boring if it flowers all year round anyway. Well, that's all yeah. you want to be You want to enjoy it when it's there, you know. You want the surprise. Yeah, you want to wait for the bloom, yeah. Yeah, exactly.
00:23:36
Speaker
Let's talk about just growing grevilleas generally. What are some tips you could give to people who are looking to grow grevilleas in their garden? All right. The first would be to pick grevilleas that are growing ah'd I'd look in other people's gardens and look what your local nursery are selling and find out what the local nursery people recommend.
00:23:59
Speaker
So then i always like to have raised garden beds for starters. the this No matter what type of soil, i like to have really good raised garden beds.
00:24:12
Speaker
Um, So mean like mounded, not like kind of your raised veggie beds? it's because it's like Yeah, yeah, mounded. Mounded up. Yeah, yeah. So that gotta to be for drainage and... Yep.
00:24:24
Speaker
Most grevilleas love good drainage, you know. Even the ones that enjoy a bit of moisture, they love good drainage. But they like a bit of... um So like a sandy loam type of soil, they don't mind a bit of clay, but they don't the clay can get if clay gets really wet and gluggy, they don't like that so much.
00:24:41
Speaker
But mounding the soil, um raising the soil up, helps to combat a bit of that sort of problem. But then they don't like it to be too sandy either because then it ah drains too much. so They're pretty similar, really, to a lot of other Australian native plants. that I guess you know the beauty of growing natives is you don't have to go and change heaps of your soil over generally.
00:25:05
Speaker
You just have to pick the right plant for the right spot. And um you know the soil is generally what it wants to grow in, particularly if you're growing endemic plants and and the things that are local to your area.
00:25:16
Speaker
Another big one is full sun for grevilleas, full sun position. That's raised bed, full sun. Do do much formative pruning? So like when they're young plants, do you kind of try and get the shape nice and full? I like to prune them as they grow and and this helps.
00:25:34
Speaker
so I like to to prune and shape the grevillea up so it's nice and strong. um So it not only creates a nice shape, but it's nice and strong in the windy conditions because they can get blown over. Nice dense foliage.
00:25:48
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. And sort of train them up and and so they grow into a nice plant, you know. I don't like them being turned into a ah square, ah ball or a...
00:26:00
Speaker
Circle or whatever you want to call it when people get the hedge trimmer out and... Toe parade or whatever. Yeah, I see. I don't like pruning them with hedge trimmers and that either. That's each to their own. like And I've seen some people do it at some a big places where they've got a lot of grevilleas and that, and it seems to work fine. But I just see that the the hedge trimmers, the cuts aren't clean and it can really promote pests and disease, you know.
00:26:28
Speaker
That leads me on to my next question is what are some prevalent pests and diseases that you've seen kind of affecting your grevilleas? Well, the main one that I get here sometimes is the borers, grevillea borer.
00:26:42
Speaker
They bore into the trunk of the plant and kill the plant pretty quickly. you know There's not much you can do about it once they they reckon you can...
00:26:55
Speaker
um spray a bit of chemical on there and patch the holes and all this, but I've had it kill some really rare plants. Oh, no. and Another one we get here, or sometimes with some of the, like your moonlights or your Grevillea honey gems,
00:27:16
Speaker
ah some of the desert Grevilleas, Grevillea ariostachia, Grevillea excelsia, Grevillea junkofolia, you get sooty mould on there, like a black sooty mould.
00:27:30
Speaker
um Once again, you've just got to make sure it's got enough airflow around the plant and that it's in a well-drained position when it's
Grafting Techniques and Conservation Efforts
00:27:40
Speaker
planted you know to help prevent the problem. I don't like spraying chemicals one little bit, you know really.
00:27:47
Speaker
No. No, me either. i'm I completely organically garden. I think a lot of the time too, i mean, you're growing obviously things from all over the country as well. So they're potentially not growing in their kind of home range where they're endemic to. So they might end up being more susceptible to certain pests and diseases that are in your area that aren't, they're not used to from where they grow, you know, so...
00:28:10
Speaker
um So they're part of the proteaceae family, which are notoriously known for being like phosphorus sensitive. Yep. That's like the same. So they're in the same family as like Banksias, Hakeias, Waratahs. Yep.
00:28:24
Speaker
but Pretty vast family, but they're phosphorus sensitive. um Very. So if you are going to fertilize, you need to fertilize with it an Australian native specific fertilizer.
00:28:35
Speaker
I just use those the Australian native slow-release fertiliser. Yeah, I just sprinkle that around the garden. Once again, it's another thing I don't like using too much, that type of thing, but ah that's I do sprinkle some of that around the garden occasionally.
00:28:52
Speaker
And I use a ah product called Power Feed. yeah That's got um some good um nutrients and and stuff in and feed in there to give them a bit of a boost.
00:29:04
Speaker
And I use a bit of seaweed solution when i whenever I'm potting up or a plant's got a bit of shock. I'll give them a bit of a hit with the sea soil and that can perk them up.
00:29:17
Speaker
But going back to what you were saying before about the protease family, they I was told by one of Grevillea expert friends, they're even considering merging haikias and calling them Grevilleas because they're that closely related.
00:29:38
Speaker
Yeah. Wow. Yep. I had to deep dive into the research on this one because this kind of blew my mind, but it's quite complex. So now these plants were considered separate for over 200 years.
00:29:51
Speaker
And their biggest difference really is that hakias have a tough woody seed that is dispersed by fire. Grevilleas, on the other hand, have thin, leathery pods ah that just release their seed.
00:30:03
Speaker
That description worked fine until DNA testing has come along and shaken things up. Turns out haecchia isn't its own thing at all. Genetically speaking, it's actually a sub-branch of grevillea.
00:30:17
Speaker
So what do we do about that? This mostly concerns the names. which is pretty important, but there's two options. Option one, merge haecchia into grevillea and call everything haecchia.
00:30:28
Speaker
That's the way taxonomy works. Hacchias were named first, so grevillea should be scooped up into the haecchia genus. Ah, option two, split Grevillea into a smaller, more manageable new genre while keeping hakeia as it is. Australian botanists were working towards the second, much less disruptive option until in 2018 when a group of European botanists decided to jump the gun.
00:30:57
Speaker
Without consulting their Aussie counterparts, they went ahead and renamed everything hakeia in a self-published volume. Yeah, As you can imagine, people weren't happy.
00:31:08
Speaker
The result? A standoff. No Australian herbaria or plant database has accepted the change, and the debate is still unresolved. But here's the takeaway.
00:31:19
Speaker
Expect some name changes soon. Scientists are working towards a stable solution that respects the history and evolutionary relationship of these plants.
00:31:30
Speaker
So, if you're a plant nerd, keep an eye out. They keep changing the names and doing all this see all this sort of thing just to confuse us, so I reckon. Oh, you can't keep up, can you? get No.
00:31:44
Speaker
And all of us plebs just have to, you know, tread water trying to catch up, you know. Yeah, yeah. So what are the most common challenges ah that you've found when it comes to growing Grevilleas? I graft the Grevilleas to get around the challenges.
00:32:03
Speaker
So yeah the weather conditions um down here in Victoria, the some of the species that are brought in from Western Australia
Sharing the Garden: Open Days and Online Presence
00:32:12
Speaker
and you get a ah wet winter Down here in Victoria, if the grevillea is not grafted, it's probably not going to have much joy, you know, but if you graft it, all it usually helps get around any of those issues.
00:32:29
Speaker
Dive deep into the grafting then, because this is, I think, your specialty. Um, so effectively the root stock that you're using, the purpose of grafting is that you use a root stock that works well in your area. So you're using Robusta, um, which is the so Southern silky oak, I think.
00:32:49
Speaker
Um, and that it kind of grows is a really sturdy plant grows really well. And, um, then you're able to bring in and graft onto the top of that root stock. yeah plants that you wouldn't regularly be able to grow in your area. That's right? Spot on, spot on.
00:33:05
Speaker
You can pretty much grow Revillea robusta. It's grown all over the world for many, many different uses because it's such a strong and robust plant as the name suggests.
00:33:16
Speaker
And it tolerates a wide range of soil conditions. And it's it's just really strong, you know, even it's a tropical ah or subtropical species, it's just got such a ah a strong adaptable root system.
00:33:30
Speaker
It can be grown like many places around the world. You know, that's why we use it. With grafting, there's a few different techniques that you can do What have you found is the most successful when it comes to grevilleas? Before I started off with the the approach graft and was having some good luck with that, ah but it was taking too long, bit of an awkward graft to do.
00:33:53
Speaker
I roughly did that graft for probably yeah five years until I met a fella named Brian Weir. He was doing like a saddle graft and a top wedge graft he was using. And he was doing a lot of standards, Grevillea standards. So that's where you grow a six foot high Grevillea robusta and then you graft, say, a weeping.
00:34:17
Speaker
Anyway, yeah, he was doing this type of saddle graft for the standards and a top wedge for the the lower grafts. So for the the small grafts.
00:34:28
Speaker
And I started practicing some of his methods. A lot of he his sort of methods and stuff, some of the the ideas came. I think Richard Tompkins is a good friend of mine and one of the the longest um and best grafters in Australia as well.
00:34:47
Speaker
ah He's been doing it for around 40 years. yeah the The side saddle graft is one of the grafts that he mainly uses.
00:34:58
Speaker
And then introduced us further on to to other ah other fellow and lady grafters um all over the place.
00:35:08
Speaker
And it's sort of like a... big community. Yeah, yeah. So we all... And we're all as mad as one another about about the grafting. And I've been to some amazing gardens and of gru of grafters who are mad Grevillea collectors all over the place. We all we share them share and share alike, you know.
00:35:29
Speaker
It's really cool. Share the plants, share the knowledge. Yeah, because the whole idea behind it is that – if they ever become extinct in the wild, that we've got them growing here in our garden and that you could always give give something back. So you give some material back.
00:35:52
Speaker
To repopulate native populations if anything ever kind of goes wrong with them. What are some lesser known or rare grevilleas in your collection or not in your collection that deserve a little more attention, you know?
00:36:04
Speaker
I know a lot of them maybe don't have the most amazing flowers in the world, but what are some of your favorites?
00:36:14
Speaker
Well, that they might not be to everyone's liking or to everyone's, like they may not be the perfect garden plant for someone else, but I've got one out there that's Grevillea batrachioides.
00:36:29
Speaker
It's from a small mountain in Western Australia. There's only a handful of them left in this area. and um it's got really coppery, orangish flowers.
00:36:42
Speaker
It's got a silverish foliage with ah red new growth at the tips. It has like a cascading type um habit, highly endangered.
00:36:55
Speaker
um It needs an interstock when grafted, so that's another piece of material you need to put in between the the top part of the plant and the Robusta rootstock when you're grafting it. So it's tricky to graft.
00:37:10
Speaker
Okay. What's the purpose of that? So incompatibility, compatibility problems. So yeah ah some some species don't like to go on straight on top of Grevillea Robusta. So you've got to put another hybrid,
00:37:26
Speaker
Grevillea, usually a hybrid in between because they seem to. Yeah, so this Grevillea anyway, I only know. So I've got got this plant. My friend Brian has got it. I only know.
00:37:40
Speaker
And Neil Marriott's got it. And they're the only three. We're the only three people that I know of who have got that plant. um It's pretty important work. Yeah, it is.
00:37:52
Speaker
So you opened your garden with Open Gardens Victoria. um Tell me about how you found hosting a garden, an open garden. I would find it so daunting.
00:38:03
Speaker
Well, daunting's the right word, mate. aye Probably six months before ah had the opening and I said, yeah, yeah, why not? I'll do that. Yeah, I was pretty brave and then I thought,
00:38:18
Speaker
the reality hit whoa what have i done what have i done how am i going to prepare for this i just looked around i thought gee there's no way i'm going have all this ready i've got so much work to do so then for that six months i worked my butt off out in that garden i i had everything because i'm a obsessive compulsive everything had to be perfect I had almost 250 people through that weekend whoa I did I the open gardens Victoria were so supportive all the way through that six months I'd get emails they'd ring me um ah I did a radio I did a radio they organized a radio interview the day came around
00:39:07
Speaker
and I'm like, here it is. This is the day I've been, the weekend I've been waiting for for a long, long time. So I thought ah thought every half an hour or every hour, I'll just say, all right, everyone, come over here.
00:39:21
Speaker
um I'm doing a tour of the garden. And so that's what I did the whole weekend. And I did grafting demonstrations. I showed why we graft. But the people were just... I was absolutely cactus, mate. Yeah. i But I had some really nice...
00:39:39
Speaker
walks with people through the garden and and we yeah it really brought out um some great personalities in people that were just so so interested in these plants.
00:39:54
Speaker
Having seen your garden online, it's phenomenal. Speaking of seeing your garden online, you actually prolifically post on Instagram and you've started doing YouTube.
00:40:05
Speaker
Just as, you know, opening your garden is ah kind of a daunting process, so is posting online um and opening yourself up to that. what was What was your intention behind starting to post to social media?
00:40:17
Speaker
Well, roughly just over a year and a half ago, i started ah ah started that. Is that it? and Yeah. um My wife said to me, start sharing some of your knowledge about these plants.
00:40:32
Speaker
Why don't you sort of put yourself and your garden on the map sort of thing? And I thought, well, how the hell am I going to do that? She said, well, start on bloody social media.
00:40:43
Speaker
And I said, oh, I can't stand social media. or not big on it. And she said, no, look, just do something. So, I started just, it all just started evolving and it was just, and then it became, because I'm a bit obsessive compulsive, I thought, all I've got to do something every day, you know.
00:41:02
Speaker
And so I did for a long, long time, you know, and just kept putting something and it's just things, just nothing's pre-planned. It all just, like all of a sudden I'll just think of an idea and I'll be like, right, I'm going out to do that and we'll see how it goes.
00:41:19
Speaker
It gave me the camera and at the first I was like, um um yeah, and this plant is whatever. And then now I can ah don't care who's watching and whatever. I don't even think about the camera in my face now. I just go, I'm happy for the camera to be on me and and um and I'm happy to explain to people and teach people things. It's all about teaching ah people things how to do things, showing them how rare these plants and how endangered they are and how important it is that people plant Australian native plants in their gardens for our local wildlife, creating habitat, ah better for our environment, um just showcasing how good it can be
00:42:11
Speaker
I think the thing too with with you and your videos is you're so relatable. You're so
Episode Conclusion
00:42:15
Speaker
down to earth, easygoing, that it's very approachable, you know. it's It's content that is joyous to watch, you know.
00:42:24
Speaker
oh thanks, mate. Where can people find you on Instagram? My Instagram is um just Binchy's Garden. So it's just um B for ball, I-N-C-H-Y-S,
00:42:36
Speaker
um lower score, garden. Perfect. um Anyways, thank you very much for being on the show today. I really appreciate it. um It's been a great chat.
00:42:48
Speaker
Thanks for having me, mate.
00:42:51
Speaker
Thank you so much for joining me today. If you like the show, don't forget to hit the follow or subscribe button. Tell a friend or two, or maybe even give the show five-star rating and a review.
00:43:02
Speaker
If you want more Gardener's Lodge content, you can find our website, our Instagram and our TikTok in the show notes below this episode. The Gardener's Lodge podcast is a growing media production.