This garden was built on a small budget. Here are the key elements

Australia Broadcast Center

19-07-2025

How do you transform a blank-slate backyard into a plant-filled retreat when you don't have a clear plan or many resources?
Jayne Varnish's inner-city Adelaide garden on Kaurna Country is a haven of plants and memories collected over almost three decades.
The layout emerged organically, "I just made wavy paths and shapes around trees," Jayne says. Over time, the garden beds were filled with "foolproof plants that were easy to propagate" such as salvias and geraniums.
Here's how her garden came together on a small budget and around existing trees.
Wild gardens like Jayne's include a variety of textures, which come from foliage.
Leaves can be plain or patterned, narrow or broad, shiny or furry, lobed or pointy. Different textures and forms create variation in light and shadows and keeps the garden interesting year-round as you're not reliant on flowers or lots of sun.
"I've always loved gardens of all kinds, it doesn't matter the style as long as there's lots of texture — a mix of strappy, fluffy, and wavy things fluttering around," Jayne says.
She has used a variety of materials for edging and paths, including bricks, logs, and stepping stones, to delineate zones in the garden with texture. It means she's not stuck needing to find and buy lots of the same material, rather making use of whatever is on hand.
A huge mulberry tree takes up a lot of space and is the natural centrepiece of the yard and it's likely as old as the house itself.
It provides plenty of fruit and the leaves become part of compost making. Being deciduous, the tree provides summer shade and winter sun for the nearby seating area.
While tough, strappy plants such as clivias can survive in the ground beneath trees, Jayne has "resorted to putting things in pots there because tree roots take all the moisture."
Even if you can plant in the ground, pots still have an important role to play in any garden, containing fast-spreading plants, and creating interesting vignettes with plants at different heights.
This garden has never been just for people. The abundance and density of shrubbery and small flowers attracts birds and invertebrates.
"I have this deep feeling that we must have more green spaces in dense urban areas. All the old houses around me are being subdivided and I feel like I need to garden for the whole suburb," she says.
For the resident blue tongue lizards and geckos, Jayne saves branches from the garden or downed street trees to make sculptural lizard shelters.
She has also invested in a mulcher machine to turn every scrap of wood into mulched paths. It's the perfect material for bugs and worms to live in, and water permeable to keep the soil moist and healthy below.
"There's water everywhere too, we've got handmade mosaic dishes around and bird baths. We have lots of birds that come in — magpies, rosellas, a family of little yellow honeyeaters," Jayne says.
Catch up on Gardening Australia's latest special 'A Passion for Plants' on iview.