More people are staying home more often, and paired with a lot of warm and sunny Autumn days it's not surprising that gardening has picked up in backyards across Orange.
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One Orange resident who has an exceptional, award-winning garden is Scott Gilbank whose Kite Street property Mena features a range of trees dating back to the 1800s in addition to more recent acquisitions.
"A lot of the trees here are over 100 years old," Mr Gilbank said.
"There's tall established trees, some in excess of 35 to 40 metres high.
"The gardens here were established after 1875 to 1880, some of the trees were planted after that."
Mr Gilbank said he has photos from 1928 that show the trees in the background.
"The garden itself in its original day was just about an acre and a half, 6000 square metres," he said, however it has since been subdivided.
Since he purchased the property in 2003, Mr Gilbank has added some plants of his own and the gardens were already one of the main features of the historic property.
"I've had many open gardens here and won a garden competition in 2010 and 2011," he said.
"It's like a mini Cook Park in the backyard, many people would describe it as an oasis in the CBD.
He said the old trees provide a heavy green canopy in Summer before changing colour and falling in Autumn.
Mr Gilbank said the garden also flowers all year round with a wide range of plants that are suited to each season with jonquils and tulips to come up in the dead of winter in July and August.
"Autumn is a great time to get a lot of moisture in the garden because it sets things for the winter, when spring comes they just fly out of the ground," Mr Gilbank said.
"I left school when I was 15 and I became a green keeper at Castle Hill Country Club.
"I never went back to that line of work but I never lost those skills."
He said part of his inspiration came from his grandparents who were avid gardeners.
However, Mr Gilbank said the drought and hot days from a hot dry summer caused parts of some of the shrubs to burn and die back.
To remedy the damage he has given the plants a winter trim and he has separated some ground cover plants that had started to clump together.
"A lot of those dead branches have been cut back and removed, hopefully those things will reshoot in the spring time again," Mr Gilbank said.
"I've probably taken out maybe 10 cubic metres of branches and leaves and bits of dead things. That comes to a small truck load."
Mr Gilbank said in the main growing periods he spends about two to three hours working in the garden each week, which he said wasn't a lot.
"The plants themselves will pretty much self maintain except the roses out the front, that I dehead," he said.
"The rest of the shrubs are self flowering."
The only things that I buy every year are petunias, the rest are established shrubs and perennials, I don't buy new plants.
- Scott Gilbank
Being a deciduous garden he said between now and July all the leaves that are on the trees will end up on the ground and he will leave about five to 10 centimetres of leaves to self compost over the garden.
Although it is a self-composting garden he said he also uses blood and bone, Seasol and Rustica Plus fertilisers to provide balance in the soil.
"The roses are the ones that really get the good mixture," Mr Gilbank said.
"A lot of people are really perplexed how I grow my roses but that's a secret recipe, they are well fed.
"Early budding is the time to fertilise, that happens in the rose period from November to the end of March, they will be fertilised every six weeks."
Mr Gilbank said he hasn't recently purchased any new plants but he has transplanted "quite a few".
"The garden, it's an evolving thing," he said.
"A lot of the new plants that I put in here were in 2008 and 2007, they were roses.
"The only things that I buy every year are petunias, the rest are established shrubs and perennials, I don't buy new plants."
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