Sophie's Garden

Sophie Thomson is the South Australian presenter for ABC TV's Gardening Australia and she writes for Gardening Australia magazine. Sophie's passionate about plants and gardening and her specialty is climate compatible and sustainable gardening.

At the Gardening Australia Expo Adelaide, Sophie is creating a large display garden. This garden will show how to create water zones within a garden to incorporate plants with low, moderate and no supplementary water requirments.

Sophie will be presenting three talks from this garden each day.

10:45am - Beneficial Backyards

This presentation will focus on sustainable gardening and how the garden good guys can help us to naturally overcome many of the common garden pests. It will also cover how to create a garden where we encourage and foster these garden guardians.

12:45pm - Dry Gardening - Plants for Dry Gardens

This presentation will focus on selecting climate compatible plants for South Australian gardens. Not only will this talk showcase some great plants but it will also show you what qualities and characteristics to look for.

3:15pm - Designing Dry Gardens

This presentation will cover such factors are:

• Grouping plants together according to their water requirements
• Soil improvement
• Mulching - be sure to have this done prior to the warmer weather
• Feeding - following the principle that "happy, healthy plants don't get sick"
• Watering - how best to apply the water that we do use