Petrol station gardens of SA Pt I
There are many coffee table tomes & glossy magazine spreads on the elite gardens of South Australia: old-school Toorak classicism with David Austin roses & box hedges; contemporary native wonderlands endorsed by Angus Stewart; carefully manicured, Edna Walling-inspired Hills estates; structural (or is that sculptural?) foliage xeriscapes with Yuccas & river pebbles.
It is time to shed some light on the dead end of the spectrum – the anti-garden shadow world of petrol stations. Beyond the open gardens & flower shows there are places of supreme endurance against the non-natural elements, places where Jimmy Barnes might have pissed in 1973, places of begrudging fulfilments of minimum environmental regulations, where ‘companion planting’ means the harmony of weeds with bitumen & metal, and where soil is enriched with petroleum & plastic.
If the mid suburbs house the Quiet Australians and their quiet gardens, petrol stations are the ubiquitous but near invisible gardens – invisible as in passed by millions but noticed by no one.
An attribution & proud nod: I was inspired to write this post by Kate Herd’s 2016 article ‘Petrol station plants: the Bold and Un-Beautiful’, published on garden/design website The Planthunter. My post aims to add to this fine work.
While I do focus on petrol stations I have not let this limit me – the horizon extends to kindred locations like supermarkets & bottle shops. In sequel articles I plan to expand into motels, megaplex cinemas, industrial estates and much more.
Please come with me as I take this walk (well, series of drives, consuming astronomical volumes of petrol) through the great petrol station gardens of South Australia.
Archetypal commercial landscape 2020: pencil pines, African Iris (Dietes bicolor) understorey & cement wall backdrop with matching colour scheme under a Mediterranean sky. This forms the border between a petrol station and a bottle shop (double whammy!)
Melaleuca stump remnant & exposed root base in U-shaped car park divide at the Bridgewater Coles Shopping Centre.
Classic aged woody Rosemary at Belair – no match for the Liquefied Petroleum Gas hazard sign. Could easily have read ‘Warning - plant ahead’. Great LPG tank colour scheme in the foreground.
Masterful combination feature at same Belair site: well-trodden Correa with denuded bark chip mulch & exposed weed mat base, all against neon gaming sign backdrop. They missed a rhyme chance here with Correa & scoria. Perhaps the colour clash would have been too much.
A chillier touch here in Stirling – dwarf Nandina domestica ‘Nana’ in mid-winter colour backed by Cupressus macrocarpa 'Greenstead Magnificent', with bark chip mulch. Quiet side-street location perfect to rehabilitate the Nandina from chronic landscaping overuse.
Classic original style near Kilburn in Adelaide’s inner north – deceased Diosma over pink pebble base & exposed brown dripper pipe, framed in asymmetrical concrete border at traffic junction.
Eremophila cultivar (left) doing nicely, Dianella revoluta (right) looking sorry after summer, painted bark mulch in the foreground (because real bark colour just isn’t good enough), trailer with cage in the background.
Clipped hedge of Portulacaria afra (elephant bush or dwarf jade plant) over white quartz pebble mulch, once again in asymmetrical concrete border. Takes the observer right back to 1982.
