Casrock Garden

We will be posting pics of some plants in our collections (check our photo albums)... some babies may be available for sale, so keep an eye on this page. “CASROCK GARDENS”

Casrock Gardens has been a changing scene for 30+ yrs & the changes continue as we face more challenges, mainly climate but now age is restricting what we can do. Starting with a blank canvas, on a 1 acre town block, our origin

al goal was of course, to get some shade trees planted. Our first design included lots of natives & flowers, giving us a very colourful garden. As the trees grew, the shade became too much for the natives which grew leggy & not attractive so these were replaced with palms & other exotic understory plantings. Our palms are now mature & our garden is more of a jungle with a canopy of palm fronds & tree tops. It is noticeably cooler when you enter our yard in the summer which, in my opinion, is a necessity in our climate. In spite of the challenges of the deep shade, dry areas full of invading feeder roots & truck loads of fallen leaves, we would not have it any other way. We have found plants like Sansevieria actually thrive in these conditions. Agaves do well in the more sunny areas & Haworthia, Aloes & Gasteria are growing happily in some semi shaded spots. We have many Cycads in our gardens & some are now extinct in their natural habitats. Hardy shrubs & a few flowering annuals fill up the rest of our spaces. We appreciate the look of natural rock landscapes so lots of rocks in our garden, hence our name. These are mostly aesthetic but are also useful for water retention with the larger ones providing some much needed shade in open areas. The natural leaf drop gives us more than enough ground covering mulch. We have a pond & several other water features which provide some humidity to the surrounding areas. Over the years we have had many celebrity gardeners visit. Tom Wyatt was one of the first describing it as a Paradise Garden because of the variety of plants growing here. The late Colin Campbell visited us twice with tours, more recently Jerry Coleby-williams {ABC Gardening Australia presenter}, Annette Irish {Horticultural Consultant} & others have dropped in. Lawrie Smith {Noted Landscape Architect & Mt Cootha Botanic Gardens Curator}, had some very impressive comments about the design of our garden. We were part of the Open Garden Scheme in 2006 & have hosted several bus tours through our garden over the years including the Botanica Tour hosted by Ross McKinnon & more recently Arno King. Since our garden began, we have collected many unusual & rare plants...some offspring of these are now available for sale. The plants we propagate here are very hardy in our conditions. Thank you for taking the time to view our page.