Getting to know: Phil Withers
Last year Phil Withers took home the prestigious Gold Show Garden Award for his Landscape design show garden ‘I see wild’.
Phil is returning to the Melbourne International Flower & Garden Show this year to present ‘The Welcome Garden’ & we can’t wait for it to be unveiled.
Jason Chongue from ‘the Plant Society’ sat down with Phil to find out more about the award winning designer.
Company name:
Phillip Withers Landscape Design
What makes you so passionate about plants?
Curiosity predisposed my passion for plants, ever since I was a kid. My childhood home backed onto a Stringybark Forest at the feet of the Dandenong’s. It was there that I first began gawking, poking, and getting dirt beneath the fingernails. I caught the bug and proceeded to follow greenery all around the world.
What do plants mean to you?
Plants are a creative outlet – a form of expression.
How has your lives benefited from gardening?
In the modern, virtual world of ‘likes’ and ‘retweets’ and ‘tags’, I enjoy the visceral feel of being out the back garden: getting back to nature, going slow, experimenting, succeeding, failing!
Have you killed any plants recently?
Of course! We use our home and the studio as a little innovation station. Piloting the globes floral biodiversity in a heap of scenarios: vertically, in roof gardens, in different climes and in fresh and playful combinations.
Can you provide some tips to planting in small spaces?
- Don’t just think floor space: festoon your walls and roof with lush greenery.
- Use a range of plants: complexity will deceive the eye, opening up your space.
- Finally, use the borrowed landscape. Arrange plantings so the lushness of your own home weaves into next door’s lofty oak, or the blue hue of faraway hills.
