The ability to create beautiful arrangements is without doubt the abundance of flowers, foliage and berries we use. The berries, seed heads and other interesting textural and tactile elements our gardens gives us is an enormous pleasure in so many ways.
Barry and I purchased our block about 16 months after the 1983 Ash Wednesday bush fires suffice to say there was no garden to speak of, however, we were endowed with beautiful terracing although these needed to be restored and repaired. There was a lot of cleaning up to do before we even considered planning a garden.
The next stage was the home, we built this on the original house site, which, naturally gave us the boundaries on which to plan the garden. I didn’t know much about gardening or even planning a garden back then.
Our instinct was to plant a number of trees to compensate for the bareness left by the Ash Wednesday fires, planting a number of trees such as Oak, Copper Beech, Golden and green Ash, Elms, Maples, Crab Apples, Dogwoods and a copse of Silver Birches. The eucalypts were already re-establishing themselves. My very first tree I planted was the majestic Mt Fuji Cherry tree, which after 30 years of growth, has now a trunk girth of nearly 1.5 metres and canopy of nearly 7 meters. This is the tree we enjoy sitting under in summer.
Next was to plan the perennial beds; today called a ‘cutting’ garden. Most of our beds are designed to be open for ease of access, however, during the process we planted a number of ‘Buxus’ hedges for an element of formality. During he early years of our garden and planting we included David Austin and hybrid tea roses, delphiniums, dahlias, peonies and other interesting perennial and a lower canopy of shrubs of different varieties - viburnums, azaleas, rhododendrons, camellias, climbers such as wisteria, clematis and hydrangea and my favourite climbing rose ‘Albertine’.
The next life cycle of our garden was the drought. We struggled through a close to 15-year drought, water being so precious at this time I had the attitude that it had to survive with or without any watering. We did lose a couple of silver birch trees and rhododendrons, one of my favourites ‘Fragrantisima’ sadly didn’t survive, but luckily the rest managed to survive.
Twenty-five years on the top canopy of trees have grown enormously and have provided welcoming shade from the summer heat, however, casting such a wide shadow has impacted on my perennial beds. I had decided to remove perennials and roses that no longer flourished and introduced a number of shade-loving plantings, increasing my hellebore beds, introducing Hosts, delicate cyclamen and a number of other interesting shade loving perennial plants and bulbs.
Our garden is ever evolving, trying to keep pace with the ever-changing weather patterns, our personal needs and how e would like to enjoy our time with the garden. My next ambition is to plant shade-loving native varieties.
Although I do use my garden on occasions for my business as a florist, primarily it is a garden that has grown with us and our life style.
Make your garden your own.