Everything we teach has been tested in a real garden—not just written in a book.
When my late wife Sheila and I bought our home in 1976, we inherited a neglected 1,300-square-metre property with more than twenty mature trees and years of deferred maintenance.
It looked overwhelming.
But together, we transformed that neglected property into something we were truly proud of.
Over the years I learned pruning, landscaping, irrigation, paving, propagation, composting, fertilising, seed raising, pest control and how to design gardens around their individual microclimates.
Weekend after weekend we visited nurseries, selected plants carefully, experimented, made mistakes, learned from them and steadily improved our garden.
Every success taught us something. Every failure taught us even more. Eventually, after entering three times, we were honoured to win the Johannesburg Garden Competition in 1992.
That award wasn't the end of our gardening journey. It was proof that ordinary people—with patience, practical knowledge and persistence—can create extraordinary gardens.
Today my mission is to pass those decades of experience on to you.
My hope is that these weekly guides will help you create a garden that brings you pride, peace and enjoyment for many years to come.
I'd be delighted to help you on that journey.
