A Binny Christmas with Petrina Blooms.
I'm Petrina Blooms and we're here in my garden in Melbourne, Victoria.
I'm a florist and I'm a gardener, and I bring my two passions together. Welcome to my workshop, which is also my home, where I host my friends around the table. Lots of people come in, see the garden. It's a very joyful place.
Tell us about the garden.
"We've been here for 14 years now. When we moved in here, she had the bones, and I flattened the entire thing. The poor lady who we bought the home from was so worried. She said, “Oh no, a gardener hasn't moved in here.”
And I'm like, “No, no, wait. Just give me some time, I promise. I do like gardening.” It was very sweet. I just had a different vision. When the kids were little, I needed to see them running around.
She had these big, tall plants everywhere. There wasn't a lawn, so I flattened it, made a lawn. But it had the bones, so that's why I bought it. It had the beautiful gum trees at the back, a screen of trees on this side of the fence. The rest I just flattened and started again, which I love, because you get to be creative, you get to make what you love.
I've always put in thousands and thousands of flowers each year, usually around 14,000 a year. I plant come autumn. I just love beauty. I love Mother Nature. I love her so much. I just love to have beauty all around me, and it brings so much joy.
The more joy it gives me, then I can go and give others joy. That's why I love it so much. It's my happy place. You'll always find me here, evening, morning, anytime. I love bringing people through the garden gates. My favourite part, just sharing her
What’s your favourite flower?
My favourite flower is definitely the garden rose. I absolutely love her. She's got the most beautiful scent, her colours. If I were to be a flower, I just want to be a garden rose.
And a gorgeous little perfect fairy rose, I've been growing her for five years. This is the first year I've had flowers because of all the possums. I love her, so she's going on the Christmas table this year. Definitely the garden rose. That's my favourite. I just adore them.
Another of my favourites. Her name is Just Joey, beautiful, big open cups. Gorgeous apricot, peachy colour. She's always out at Christmas time.
The Banksia rose, she just goes wild all through my trees. She's beautiful, all the way up into the sky.
And my pom-poms. Cute little clusters and little baby pink buds, and then she pops open to a really delicate spray. She weaves her way all through the pink rose. It's so good because the possums haven't found her yet, so I'm very happy about that.
Lilac smells really beautiful. She's the sweetest-smelling flower. I just love her. I wish the snowballs had perfume. They don't. Imagine if they had perfume, they'd be a triple threat.
This gorgeous one here, chamomile. You can put her in tea and even drink her. She has a tiny little scent. She smells like chamomile tea. Beautiful. I think they go so well together.
Then of course I love little snapdragons, because my sister and I used to make them sing. La la la la. We used to make them talk to each other when we were little, because my granddad would grow them in his garden. They're beautiful. I think they just work perfectly together.
It's like having a bee hotel.
I've still got some really late tulips coming up, but next will come through the poppies, and there's peonies all coming through here. Then I'll turn the garden beds over for late spring.
I treat my tulips as annuals because it's a show garden, so I like to have that wow factor each year. I give them on to my mum and she takes the time replanting them, because only some come back again. Not all tulips will reflower.
I really struggle with the slugs. I leave out my little pots. I call them my earwig hotels. In the morning you wake up and they're full of earwigs.
Tips for setting a Petrina Table?
Whenever you come for lunch or dinner at my house, there are always flowers on the table. Always, always, always. Whatever's in the garden, whatever's in season, I just pick them and I spread them on the table. So when people walk in, there's that beautiful impact.
Then as we have dinner, I just remove them so you can actually see each other from across the table. But there will often be little low-lying flowers, little roses, some wisteria, just happiness everywhere.
Whatever's in season, I just lay it all over the table. It's not fancy. It's not curated. It's just as you would find in Mother Nature. I love using leaves for placemats. These are my little placemats here. I've just pinched them from the front garden. Perfect.
In autumn, I'll often use big autumn leaves for coasters, which I really like. I just put them there, and then you put your drink on top of them. Just keep it easy and simple. The flowers do all the work. I just think the flowers are gorgeous.
Christmas.
I love it when the roses come out. Like the first glass of champagne. I absolutely love sitting underneath the wisteria, under the trees in the garden. We always have Christmas in the garden. Every year. We're so lucky in Australia, we have the best weather.
I want it to look like a little forest, like a little rambling flower forest. Keep it nice and low so people can see each other. Just twigs. Not perfect. I'm just creating a table runner out of Mother Nature, beautiful Mother Nature. I let her do the hard yards, so there's no real strategy. I just kind of plonk it.
As Mum says, we're lucky to be here another day.
What I often use is beautiful drinking glasses. This is a little mini champagne flute, and I love to use them down the table. This is a little medium-sized bud vase. Nothing fancy, because the flowers speak for themselves.
I love my little birds. It's like Mother Nature. I like to put little birds on the table, a pop of orange. Then on the napkins, just a little flower, which I love.
Then these the cute little mandarins, and I've just carved out their centres and popped little flowers in. I use them as a vase, which is really cute. It's just a talking point around the table, a pop of colour and just something different for Christmas.
I love to have a drink stand which is separate from the eating area, because I love how people can wander through the garden. It just opens up the space and it's somewhere else to enjoy. I just have little flowers lying around, especially garden roses at Christmas time, which I love. This year we're having gin, which is my favourite.
That way people can walk through the garden, pick up their glass, mingle and chat in Mother Nature, which I absolutely love.
I have it all set up, ready to go. Just flowers on the table, the gin, the drinks. Voila. Simple. And off you go. Cheers. If it's in a beautiful place, the lunch will go longer. If the drinks flow, people will laugh louder. That's what I think, anyway.
When you grow a garden, you can just have flowers to pick all the time. Look at those little happy faces. I love pansies in drinks. Little violas there. My absolute favourite.
Christmas for me is about being outdoors in the garden. It's just coming together outdoors. It's starting early. We usually start at 11 a.m. and we have a glass of bubbles and we have seafood. Then we just sit under the trees and go long into the afternoon. We have a rest, and then we start again in the evening.
It's a long, long lunch which turns into a long, long dinner. Then our neighbours usually join in, which is lovely. Once the family leaves and the neighbours come in, that's when the real trouble begins.
It's about being with my beautiful family and my partner's family. They all come in, but it's all about being out in Mother Nature.
Australian summer for me is seafood, champagne, friends. Of course, we have a bit of a nap. The telly is usually on. Of an evening, we just continue on into the night. The neighbours move in, then there's more champagne and it doesn't stop. We finish quite late, usually around ten, and then all the leftovers the next day.
The perfect Petrina gift?
If someone was to give me a gift, I would love any pot plant, any rose, any shrub, any climbing rose, any standard rose, anything gardening, any flowers, a little vase. I love vases. I love them. Anything to do with the garden would make me so happy. Even compost. A bag of compost would make me happy.
What would be my favourite present for Christmas? It would have to be if someone gave me a garden rose. I would love that, in a pot. Perfect. Couldn't be happier. A beautiful garden rose.
What’s your favourite tree?
This is my beautiful double Mount Fuji cherry blossom, and I love her. I call her Lady Di because, to me, she is the princess of all trees. She's an absolute showstopper. She comes out after everyone leaves the garden.
I have so many people coming through the garden every year for spring, and then she always comes out when everyone leaves. She's beautiful. She's shy, and that's why I love her. I would like more people to be able to enjoy her. She reminds me of beautiful pink clouds.
She just makes me feel so loved. Sometimes I just come under here and have my cup of tea. I think she's so beautiful. She's got a tinge of pink through her, a slight fragrance, and she's a weeping cherry. She's about four or six years old now, and she's got no competition. That's why she's doing well. The possums can't get her, which always helps. She just brings so much joy, and she really frames the corner of the garden.
This beautiful lady here, she's called my vase of flowers. I think she's a really good example of when a tree is happy and she's in the right place. She just grows into the sunshine. She's got no competition.The thing with these beautiful ladies is they grow horizontal, which I love. They're known for their flat tops. When you go to Japan and see them in cherry blossom season, they're just incredibly beautiful.
With this pretty lady, she will grow a good 20 centimetres every year, which is a lot. She's fast-growing. That's why I call her my vase of flowers, because she just frames my garden.
At first she just comes out and pops all the gorgeous double little white flowers. What I love about her now is that she'll drop her little flowers and it's just like snow, which is really cute. Let's pretend it's snowing. It's snowing flowers, literally. Then she'll give this gorgeous green canopy with dappled light, which is beautiful for summer.
Come autumn, she's generous again and gives the most incredible orange, like she's on fire. This flame in the garden. I always have my fire pit going in autumn when I do all my planting, and she keeps me company. She's one of my favourites and just a great example of a tree given the right space and the right amount of love.
She knows she has a place here and belongs here. She just frames my entire garden, and I love her for that.
She just won everyone's hearts this spring. When all the tours came through, everyone's eyes went to the dogwoods, and I don't blame them. To me, she is just one of the prettiest trees you could ever have in your garden.
I met her when I went to Yosemite National Park. We drove into the park in spring and it was nighttime. I was looking out the window and thinking, “What are those white flowering trees everywhere?” In the morning we woke up and the entire park was covered in beautiful white dogwoods, flowering dogwoods.
They're actually native to northeastern parts of America. In the valley in Yosemite, there's the most beautiful two pink dogwoods, and you can see them from miles away. They just grow in the valley floor. They were gifted to them from the United Kingdom, and they're just stunning.
I promised myself one day when I'd have a garden, I would have my little Yosemite here with me. Hence my dogwoods. I found five this year in the nursery just three months ago, and I did three car trips. I said to the nice lady, “I'll buy them all,” because I needed them.
It's this big impact in a small space in my garden, which works because I don't have a big garden.
The actual flower is the centre here. These four little ones, which I thought were the flower, they're the bracts. They're basically little beacons for the bees. “Breakfast this way, please. Go this way.” They're just gorgeous, and they tend to glow when the sun gets on them.
They're almost translucent. They start out like a bright pink with no leaves, and the flowers pop first. As they get on in life, this gorgeous green foliage comes through, which is beautiful and lush for summer. Then this will go a lovely red come autumn, and she'll have a nice little sleep.
Then look at the dress she puts on in spring. I mean, wow. I just want to be a dogwood. It'd be amazing. I'd love a white one too. If I do see a nursery which has white dogwood, watch out. I'll find you and I'll buy five. She's hard to find here in Melbourne, but I would love some more.
Your favourite spaces within the garden?
All my admin happens here, and I'm really proud of that. My flower world has just kind of blown up and got really big, so I had to learn how to do it. I also wrote my book here. It was beautiful because I could look out on the wisteria.
I'd open up the doors and on a sunny day I'd just put my desk out here, literally. I would write out in the beautiful garden underneath the wisteria. She's just my happy place.
I love it that the garden is taking over the house. I love this idea about rooms within rooms within your garden. To me, the garden is just an extension of another room. This is the wisteria room here. That's where I set up my workshop and do all my floral bouquets.
Then I come into this room and I call this my cherry blossom room, which I love because it's got the Mount Fuji cherries. When they're in bloom, it's just flower power all around you. I've got big cherry blossoms hanging over the top of you. Then you walk down the stairs of the deck onto the lawn.
I like this idea, not just inside a house with four walls, but a garden can offer the same space. My favourite would have to be my wisteria room, though. It's like purple falling flowers everywhere.
This is my beautiful wisteria, and her name is Wendy because everyone has a name in my garden. I love her so much.
She is 48 years old, and there are actually two of them. They share the pergola, but she shares the space with the Virginia creeper as well.
Wendy is a Chinese wisteria, and apparently the Chinese wisteria flowers go one way, and on a Japanese wisteria the flowers spin the other way, which is really beautiful. Also, the flowers on the Japanese wisteria are much longer.
I am really unorthodox in the way I grow her. I don't prune it back. I just let her go after her flowers. I let her run wild, and I grow her up onto the roof. Every winter I pull down each cane, and that's when I'll give her a cut. I'll cut out all the dead wood, and then I'll thread each cane back through the roof, through the pergola.
She's like an art installation. When you come to the garden, you have to move around her, and I love that. When I have her canes with all the flowers, you can work and get all different heights and depths. It's literally like being under the sea and there's coral everywhere, and you're swimming through here, which I absolutely love.
It's a joy seeing people's faces when they're on the garden tours. They come around and they see her. She's a jaw-dropping moment when she's in bloom.
I thread each cane and use little wires to tie her on to other parts, or I tie her on to other parts of her main trunk. I spend a good week literally taming her and training her. Each cane has metres and metres of flowers, which is beautiful because then I can thread them like an art installation.
When people come into the garden, they need to walk around Wendy, which I love, because it makes you stop and look at Mother Nature. I love that because she's here first. To me, she's the boss of my garden.
The bees love her. Everybody says, “Oh my gosh, she smells amazing,” which she does.
Her canopy is so dense and thick and lush that it can be pouring rain and we can sit underneath here and have lunch. I call it my green room in summer because I grow the Virginia creeper all the way down to the floor, and it's like curtains. You need to open it up, and then you come into the green room and have lunch.
Your favourite season?
I would have to say my favourite season would be autumn with the beautiful Virginia creeper. She goes this gorgeous red colour and then the wisteria, Wendy, goes golden. She puts on a gold dress and then they just take it in turns. The sun shines through and they almost glow together as a team. It's just spectacular.
Then she has a rest and I say goodnight. Good on them, because they've put on such a show. They lose their leaves, and then they have a rest, and I don't blame them. I'm like, “Good on you. I'd sleep too.” If I was that beautiful, you'd find me taking my beauty naps as well for a good three months.
For all of us gardeners or not, this rollicking read of joy, happiness & beauty just jumps off the page. We tried to edit this down, but just couldn’t. And now so inspired to plant dogwoods, train our wisteria, plant more bulbs, let it grow wild, get a British Blue, have a cocktail table in the garden & just love Christmas.
For all of us gardeners or not, this rollicking read of joy, happiness & beauty just jumps off the page. We tried to edit this down, but just couldn’t.
And now so inspired to plant dogwoods, train wisteria, plant more bulbs, let it grow wild, get a British Blue, have a cocktail table in the garden & a very merry Christmas.
We hope you enjoy this as much as we did.
Love Binny xx
We hope you enjoy this as much as we did.
Love Binny xx
You can find Petrina @petrinabloomsHer book Garden Joy is out March 26 with Hardie Grant.
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