Sometimes gardening isn’t just about turning soil but also about turning over ideas. Thinking about how – and why – we might fashion a particular garden can be as central as the physical act of actually tending it.

Organisers of the Australian Landscape Conference have always known this and the 2023 event, to be held next month, will focus on the different approaches we might take when it comes to making private gardens and public landscapes. Not everything that will be discussed is going to sound immediately relevant to your backyard or balcony but even if some of the concepts sound a bit abstract, threads will work their way in, guaranteed.

Claude Cormier’s public spaces, such as Berczy Park in downtown Toronto, are changing how we use cities.Credit:Michael Muraz

It will be like “a writers festival about gardens” says the owner and organiser Fleur Flanery. She says she wants the event to “prompt new approaches that respond to the challenges of our time”. Expect talk about how gardens are being established – in all sorts of places all over the world – in such a way that mitigates the effects of climate change, fosters community cohesion and just brings pleasure.

If you’re stuck in your ways or uninspired by your patch or simply curious about how others create a landscape, talk fests like this can get you sharpening your secateurs and grabbing your spade.

Biodiversity audits have revealed an extraordinary array of wildlife at Great Dixter in the UK.Credit:Claire Takacs

Speakers at the conference will discuss everything from landscaping in the streets of Melbourne and the uniqueness of Australian ecologies to tending plants in the wild north of Japan and fashioning gardens on rooftops in Barcelona.

There will be Claude Cormier from Quebec who doesn’t design domestic gardens and who never does something “just because it looks pretty” but whose public squares, town parks and other civic landmarks have a beauty and a daring that is changing the way we use cities.

And there will be Fergus Garrett from the UK who has collected the data to show how a dashing ornamental spread like Great Dixter can house an extraordinarily rich array of wildlife, and there will also be Teresa Moller, from Chile, who takes her cues from the land and ties everything to its place.

All up there will be 13 speakers pushing ideas about what a private garden or a public landscape might be and that can include everything from a biodiversity hotspot, a carbon sink and a flood-mitigation strategy to a community-building endeavour and a place of comfort and beauty.

The nuts-and-bolts, feed-and-mulch aspects of growing plants and establishing a garden are not the main game here, with the discussion focusing on issues like our relationships to place, the philosophy of beauty and the allure of rule-breaking.

While the conference has been run in Melbourne – mostly biennially – for more than 20 years, this is only the second one put on by Flanery, who acquired the event from Warwick and Sue Forge after attending it and finding she “just loved” the breadth of the topics discussed. “I thought, wow, that takes the garden and landscape world to another level.”

“I live in Yass and in gardens along the whole eastern seaboard I do think there is a lot of sameness. Many gardeners have become locked into a certain way of thinking. The conference can show you that there is a whole world of opportunity,” she says.

“Don’t despair over your camellia dying or your hydrangea not flowering there are so many species you can grow and so many techniques to try. I want to bring in the very best ideas from Australia and around the world and to lift the gardening experience.”

She also wants to inspire more young people into an “ongoing dialogue” about what we want from our own backyards as well as from public open space, urban trees and other municipal plantings.

Flanery says that while the rise of naturalism and of loose, abundant landscapes is one of the key gardening themes of our times, there are endless possibilities and no one answer. At the conference, everything will be on the table.

The Australian Landscape Conference is on 18 and 19 March at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre. There will also be garden tours on 17 March and masterclasses on 20 and 21 March. Go to outlandishventures.au for more information.

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