Interview by Paul Plant – Continued from p. 61 in Issue 11

If you were to design a roof top garden, what 5 plants would you recommend as worth trying in the subtropics?

In addition to the various Sedum species which are used worldwide, including tropical cities such as Singapore, I would try:
Angular Pigface (Carpobrotus glaucescens)
Baby Sun Rose (Aptenia cordifolia)
Glasswort (Sarcocornia quinqueflora)
Seablight (Suaeda australis)
Salt couch (Sporobolus virginicus)

All gardeners learn through trial and error. Name 4 plants you will probably never try again.

Fiddlewood (Citharexylum spinosum)
Singapore Daisy (Sphagneticola trilobata)
Climbing Bauhinia (Bauhinia corymbosa)
Honeysuckle (Lonicera japonica)

Why did you enter the horticultural industry?

I graduated first in Agricultural Science then researched and tutored in plant physiology, before studying landscape architecture, so it was a logical progression to start teaching landscape architecture students about plants and horticulture in 1981 at QUT (then QIT).