Dan’s Magic Honey Is Back! - Feb 13, 2026
Dear gardening friends
Hayden turned 30 yesterday, he thinks that's so old, he told me. "Yes mate you're almost a has been". He wanted the Banoffee cake, it was so small, we all sat around it salivating. We all agreed it was the best birthday cake we've ever eaten.
We sang happy birthday, it was so loud and so bad. Hayden cut the cake up, I was doing a bad job apparently, Karyn has been our Cake cutter for 30 years, but she's gone now.
It truly tasted amazing, every bit of it had surprises. We had enough, we are saving a piece for Dean. He's our professional cake eater.
Hayden started here for school work experience, it was like he'd been working here for 10 years, on the first day. He just started moving plants around by colours and shapes. He just knew how to make displays look amazing. He came with a great hair cut. I remember saying "Great haircut mate". Thanks was his reply. P.S He brought his own Birthday Balloons.
This Gerbera is 25 years old at least. I was on holidays in Noosa and I went to Eumundi Markets. A guy was selling Gerberas, so I bought one for my mum.
My parents stayed at Munna point Caravan park in those days all winter. The people who stayed there the longest, often had potted plants out the front of their caravans. The longer they stayed the more pot plants they had. It was like a badge of honour.
My mum put here Gerbera out the front and it flowered all winter, then she brought it home in the caravan. Yep this plant has been on holidays. She kept it in that pot.
It had been in the same terracotta pot for years, so had the Geraniums, so I took them out and cut off 25% of the roots and I cut the plants all back too. The Gerbera was incredibly pot bound.
I put them back in the same pots using Tim's Best Potting mix, and gave them a good watering. They have all come back to life, they were all covered in flowers yesterday. It's a little patch of green and red. I love plants with red flowers.
(I recently repotted a Gardenia and I got a lot of advice from customers telling me I should have potted it into a bigger pot, why was I wasting my time? When you prune roots, it's just like pruning the branches. Roots grow back faster in response to being pruned. It actually makes them grow better.)
If you've ever bought a Gerbera, you will know how incredibly hard they are to keep alive. They are new dwarf growing hybrids, that just don't last. We can't even keep them alive.
This Gerbera is one of the old fashion, tall growing varieties, it must be so tough to last this long. New varieties of plants aren't always better. Sometimes they are just new.
Dan's bees swarmed last week and he was lucky enough to catch the swarm, and put it in a Bee box. Bees can swarm a couple of times a year. The existing Queen takes 20-30,000 bees with her, to find a new home in a tree trunk.
This is how bees have moved all around Australia. Sadly with Verroa mites in the environment, most of these wild bee hives will die. Dan has lost several hives to the Verroa mite in the early days, but now he's treating his hives to control the mites.
Dan harvested his honey again this week, so we've got honey for sale in the nursery for $12.99. People who have recently bought it rave about the sweetness and its medicinal qualities. Local honey can help people who suffer from allergies.
Dan said the swarm was so big he's hoping to get honey from these bees before winter comes too. Swarming bees are full of honey and they are less likely to sting you.
I've done a story about this secret garden before. It's beside the Lifeline store in Camden. Across the road there used to be a Florist and the girl who worked there secretly planted flowers in this narrow garden. It became her garden.
But then she left, the Florist closed down the garden went into disrepair, it looked unloved for several years.
And then a new volunteer started at Lifeline and he cut everything back to stumps, the roses, the bottlebrush, Geraniums, the Agave. Everything got chopped off at knee height with a chainsaw. The garden got fed with Cow manure and mulched with Woodchip.
It rained, and everything grew back with a new lease of life. New buds appeared from bark. Plants grew and then they started to flower again. 20 year old Roses came back to life like new season rose bushes.
It made me smile this morning, nothing got pulled out, it just got reinvented. You can do this at home if your gardens grown old. Cut everything back, take it away. Let the sun shine in. Improve the soil with Tim's Cow manure.
Watch with delight as your old garden becomes a new garden again. Watch your excitement come back too. It's simple.
Happy gardening
Tim