Not just a pretty face

 This year's flower and garden show has everything from saving and storing water to growing vegies, great design ideas, bounteous blooms and expert advice. Denise Gadd reports.

AUTUMN. The season of mists and mellow fruitfulness. Perfect for wandering around the Carlton Gardens this weekend at the 14th annual Melbourne International Flower and Garden Show.

It's a different landscape this year compared to what was thrown up weatherwise in 2008 by way of hot gusty winds.

While it may still be warmish, the worst of the heat is over and finally it's time to get down to some serious gardening. "Hooray," I hear you say!

It's also the perfect time to reflect on how your plants, shrubs and trees coped over this horrendous summer. Should they stay or should they go?

You may have to be ruthless.

No one needs the stress of trying to keep unsuitable plants going when there are better species on the market designed to cope with our hotter and drier summers.

So take advantage of the wide range of different plantings at the show — native trees and shrubs, ornamentals, tropical species, succulents, bromeliads, grasses, bulbs, not to mention the ubiquitous rose, the toughest plant around this summer, which you'll find in the Royal Exhibition Building's Great Hall.

Show gardens are another highlight of the five-day event.

They demonstrate different approaches to landscaping, and while you probably won't go home, rip out your garden and build one exactly the same, there's sure to be something that catches your eye and will inspire you to emulate it somewhere in your plot.

Saying that, I would like to pick up Phillip Johnson's sustainable show garden, winner of the gold medal and a City of Melbourne award, and drop it into my garden.

Called "Habitat", it is breathtaking with its billabongs, water cascading over big boulders from one to the other, different plantings including vegetables, a Hill's hoist and double-storey stainless steel water tank.

Then there is the 250-kilogram red and yellow hand-made glass chandelier hanging from one of the trees — solar-powered, of course.

With sustainability the theme for this year's show, stainless steel tanks feature in several of the show gardens — not just as functional storage containers to collect water, but as environmental and decorative statements.

Vegetables too are popular and pop up in many of the gardens including Wayne DeKlijn's "Food for Thought" exhibit, which also won gold in the show garden category.