WAIT FOR ME AHEAD.

FAY ESCORTS YOU THROUGH HER GARDEN

As my garden visitors alight from the bus and enter my garden, I must direct them to take the path to the right because most of them halt in front of the bed of Jacobean Lilies, awed by this first impression of my garden, and want to ask me, “What are those red flowers?”

Jacobean Lilies.

I answer them briefly that these lilies originated in Mexico and are sometimes commonly called Aztec Lily or Orchid lily because of the fleur-de-lys shape of its petals.

All my life I have been a gardener. Every spring during my childhood, Dad cleared a stand of scrub beside the Myall Creek and in the rich ashes of the fire he planted seeds of tomatoes, cucumber, pumpkins, melons, beans and corn. It had fallen to me and my sisters to carry buckets from the creek and ladle water on each plant. In every instance, in the gardens of the farm homes I had previously established I was hampered by insufficient water. Here on this Granite Belt farm fronting the Severn River I realised I had unlimited space and abundant water at my disposal and saw the potential to create the garden of my dreams.

I’ll always be asked, “Did you draw it all up on paper first – a plan?”

“No. You can’t do that in this country – too many rocks. I went with the lay of the land, creating low terraces. When I wanted to plant a tree, I dropped in a crowbar. If it went clunk, I placed the tree elsewhere.”

Laying out hoses in sweeping lines, I used a spade to permanently mark the borders of what would become spacious garden beds. Between these lines I excavated soil to half the depth of the blade to form the base of paths, throwing this topsoil over into the area intended for gardens. I repeated the process of excavating soil right across the huge area that Eberhard had pegged out for the extension. This soil I shoveled into barrows, dumping the contents on the garden beds to raise the level of the soil.

A man will always point to the rock boulders surrounding the rose bowl and the smaller rocks edging the paths and comments, “You women, you always want rocks shifted! Some poor bugger must have done a lot of hard work!”

I’ll laugh and say, “That’s true, but it was a ready resource. Our farm has lots of rocky outcrops. All these paths were built over a period years. As Confucius said, all long journeys begin with one step. These paths began with one rock.”

I had roamed the property with Eberhard’s builder’s-barrow choosing rocks to utilise, scrupulously avoiding destroying the environment from which they were removed. Small boulders of every shape and form I prized loose with pick or crowbar, before laying the barrow on its side, rolling in the rock and finally heaving the barrow upright. Back to the garden I had trundled to drop off the rocks.

Frank Musumeci was hired to drill the postholes for the steel house stumps. The same day he used his bobcat and tipping truck to load and transport river sand into a dump outside the front gate.

From this heap I had shoveled the coarse sand into the barrow, wheeled each load to the excavated pathways and backfilled them. Now I only have to rake the paths once a week to clear the fallen debris of twigs and leaves.

Being a lateral thinker, I avoid constructing formal gardens, instead favouring free form curves. “Mother Nature never produces straight lines,” I explain to my visitors. I designed all my paths as romantic winding tracks wide enough for two people to stroll hand in hand with each path intended to reveal a new view around every bend. The only path that isn’t sand is the entry through the front garden leading to the office.

Again someone who hasn’t heard me answer the question previously will ask,“What are those tall spikes?”

Foxgloves like a semi shaded position

“Foxgloves. They grow wild in the forests of Europe,” I pluck flowers and place them over my finger tips. “Here they are known as foxgloves, but in Germany they are called fingerhut – a hood for the finger. They belong to the digitalis family and as such are highly poisonous.”

Someone is sure to ask, “Digitalis is a heart stimulant, isn’t it?”

“Yes, and it was used in olden days to poison kings, hence they all had food tasters,” I’ll reply.

Another question that I’m always asked is, “How do you cope with weeds?”

“I believe that ‘one year’s seeding results in seven years weeding. I also follow a lunar calendar.”

“How does that work?”

“In the vegetable garden during the first week of the waxing moon I plant leafy annuals like lettuce; the second week it is the turn of fruiting perennials or tomatoes; after the full moon I’ll plant root vegetables – carrots and beets; finally in the last week of the waning moon I weed. If I can follow this practice of weeding for a week of every month, very few plants get the chance to seed. But, look at these,” I point to a clump of violas, “my largest weed problem is self-sown flowers.”

Violas and Californian poppy.

“Why is that?”

“Largely because they will be left to flower and some seed will drop before I clear the bed.”

“Are those violas?”

“Yes, but they are known by many different names throughout the world. The English call them Heart’s Ease, the Americans refer to them as Johnny-Jump-Ups, the Germans liken them to a Little Step-Mother, for the same reason that they pop up everywhere, and the Russians reckon they are Anna’s Eyes as they are always watching you.”

FOLLOW THIS PATH ON YOUR RIGHT

FAY ESCORTS YOU THROUGH HER GARDEN.

As the tour group alights from the bus and enters my garden I direct them to proceed along a sandy path between two garden beds blooming with annuals and perennials.

These are the ‘Petticoat’ aquilegias.

Petticoats

These are the ‘Granny’s Bonnet’ aquilegias.

Granny's bonnets near the gazebo.

It is my aim to lead my garden visitors onto a vantage point where they can lean on the veranda rail or look out from the Gazebo to photograph the roses while I take up a stance below them.

Already I will have heard them telling each other wrongly that the Sweet Williams are perennial flocks or foxgloves are Canterbury bells.

Foxglove spire.

The reality is that most of our garden visitors come from the coastal and tropical cities of our State and couldn’t tell a steer from a heifer, a colt from a filly or a flower seedling from a vegetable seedling.

Away from the country and out of a garden, I doubt that I would blunder so obviously to display my ignorance, because years ago my mother taught me that it is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open my mouth and prove it. So, when I am in the company of experienced gardeners, I tend to remain quietly contemplative for I recognise that gardening is a lifetime of garnering knowledge and an apprenticeship which never ends. Thus long ago I made the decision not to deliberately waste my time or burden my brain by learning the Latin names of every plant in my garden. Not that I don’t know some, and not that I don’t respect the professional nurserymen and women who have memorised all that information, after all such knowledge is a requirement of their profession.

The difference is that I am not a professional gardener. I am a Philistine, who while willing to read garden manuals and listen to the voices of experience has borrowed from many philosophies to establish a garden that is Philistine in that it acknowledges no particular gardening tradition or style. I combine different leaf textures, colours, shrubs, trees, perennials and annuals to create different views for every season, as illustrated by these three photos of the view from our northern veranda.

Leaf textures and Tiger lilies adjacent to the northern veranda in January.

Early morning light diffused by fog, highlights the textures and colours of these trees and shrubs in April.

My garden is defined by most people as a cottage garden, because of the random nature of the plants. I once had a visitor describe it as a wild garden until he had wandered the paths for a period of time. Only then did he comprehend the order amongst apparent chaos. For instance on the northern side of the house I have chosen to plant many tall deciduous trees, thus creating lush green growth and shade for summer with autumn colour followed by leaf drop allowing the winter sunshine to warm our veranda. These trees are interspersed with lower growing conifers, thus providing some greening of the winter view and at all times of the year a diversity of foliage.

By May the deciduous Canadian Maple catches attention.

Once I have my group assembled to overlook the garden I give them the spiel about how Eberhard, my German born husband, and I moved to the Granite Belt in 1992 to establish a Bed and Breakfast style guesthouse amongst the wineries.

“At that time there was no garden, just a six year old timber house in the Australian homestead style.”

The day we sighted our future home was a cool and overcast day. Overnight rain had dampened the soil, stirring a fresh, earthy aroma from dank leaves. The house itself was not spectacular, just a three bedroom, rectangular, cypress pine homestead with a gable at both ends and verandas on the eastern and western sides. The wood was oiled a warm honey brown and the mint green aluminium roof repeated the colouring of the surrounding eucalyptus trees. Paint, the hue of sandstone, protected the gables and veranda floors from weathering.

“Eberhard assessed the house and knew immediately how he could add an extension, while I looked on the surrounds as a bare palette.”

This comment will bring gasps of awe and compliments from the group positioned to view the rose garden.

October roses

COME, WALK THROUGH MY GARDEN.

Fay escorts you through her garden

When I designed my garden it never crossed my mind that every year I would be opening it to the public throughout October and November. Instead of creating a seasonal spring garden I planned a garden which every month of the year would offer something special for our Bed and Breakfast guests.

Eberhard and I had spent the spring months of 1990 in Europe and when we moved to the Granite Belt, the coldest district in Queensland 1992 I realised that I could propagate many of the plants that I had seen growing in the Northern Hemisphere.

In 1993 I asked Eberhard to plough the field in front of our house to allow me to establish a wildflower meadow like I had seen in Germany. I realised that in the cool mountain climate of the Granite Belt I would be able to grow the red poppies, blue cornflowers and the other European flowers which had given me so much pleasure during our travels.

This photo of the geese amongst the poppies of our wildflower meadow was taken on the 26^th October, 1995 by photographer and friend, Errol Walker.

Geese in the wildflowers at Das Helwig Haus

My powers of observation came into play and I noted that it took sixteen weeks from when the poppy seed was sown for the plant to reach flowering. I recognised that it would be possible to germinate the poppy seedlings to time the flowering to begin mid October and continue on to the end of November.

With Eberhard’s approval I suggested to the Stanthorpe RSL that we should plough up our wildflower meadow and at the end of June seed it with wheat, poppies and cornflowers to represent the way the wheat fields of France had looked before the devastation of World War One. Then we would open our field to the public for a $2.00 gold coin. The RSL agreed to collect the money. They raised a thousand dollars, which was donated to Brisbane Legacy, an organization which normally earns money by selling the artificial poppies.

Several country newspapers covered the story. One of these was the Queensland Country Life. Kate Wilkie, the young journalist, wrote a feature on the village of Glen Aplin. When I read the article I noted that the district had four red products – cherries, strawberries, wines and our red Flanders poppies. I sought the support of these other tourism businesses and launched the Red November promotion, which brings numerous coach tours to these Granite Belt attractions throughout October and November.

Red wine, red strawberries, red cherries and red poppies.

Selectors for the Australian Open Garden Scheme visited our garden. They described it as young but inspirational. They asked, if we would be prepared to open under the AOG banner the following year and we agreed.

This Open Garden event resulted in a demand from coach companies and numerous clubs requesting us to open our garden over a six week period. This has grown to become an annual event for the Glen Aplin region of the Granite Belt.

During the next few weeks I will escort you through my garden pointing out to you the highlights of the spring season and answering the questions asked by my coach tour visitors.

As I do this I will explain how I constructed the garden from scratch, designing the layout, sourcing the landscaping materials and establishing one section at a time over a period of five years

Fay escorts a garden tour group in 2007

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In years gone by the Flanders poppy spread with mankind right around the Mediterranean Sea and across Europe from Russia to Great Britain. Man, with bags of wheat seed, probably carried it across the English Channel, as the poppy was a weed of wheat fields. Another alternative is that the seed was carried in soil attached to a garden implement.

There is much mythology associated with these poppies because they have grown for centuries around the Mediterranean. They appear on ancient Greek friezes and seed has been found in the tombs of the Pharaohs. One story is that they originated in China. It was then a white flower from which a potent drug was distilled, called the Flower of Forgetfulness. After a battle when much blood was shed upon a field, the poppies grew red the next year, with a black cross in the middle. These poppies are still a wild flower and each year I see variations of colour in the overall expanse of red from shades of orange to almost purple.
Throughout my childhood as I discovered the joys of embroidery I particularly liked the designs that featured what were commonly called the Field flowers. These were the red Flanders poppy, blue cornflower, golden wheat heads and sometimes the white Marguerite daisy. When holidaying in Europe with my husband in 1990 I realised a life long ambition, to see these flowers blooming amongst the wheat crops.
Two years later when we moved to live on the Granite Belt I realised that I could grow the red Flanders poppy to begin flowering in October and continue to the end of November. The poppy flower has a small cup-like seed head that perhaps contains a thousand seeds. These seeds are as small as ground black pepper and just as hard. As the seed ripens they fall as from a pepper pot on to the ground and remain there in the soil until conditions are ready for germination.
The field poppies, or Flanders poppies as they are now known, were weeds of the wheat fields of France and Belgium. Due to the devastation of World War One no wheat was planted in the fields over which the armies of Europe fought. The soil of these fields was disturbed by the shelling, trench digging and grave digging. We have all heard of the heavy rains that turned this arena into a quagmire during the winter months, but in the spring the poppies appeared with a blaze or red wherever the soil had been disturbed. The soldiers from Commonwealth countries had never seen the like and they named them the Flanders Poppy.
Each year we cultivate our Remembrance Field towards the end of June. This throws the fine seed on to the surface of the soil. Firstly we turn the soil over with a disc plough. Then harrows are dragged over the field to level the soil.

It is then necessary that the seed be kept moist for the next two weeks. It is possible that we will have a down pour of winter rain to soak the soil, but if rain doesn’t fall we apply water via overhead irrigation sprinklers.
This winter of 2008 has been cold and dry. The photo below shows the frost on the field one July morning. The poppies have germinated but are only small plants at the time this photo was taken.

The frosts have continued into August but I have great faith that once the warm weather arrives in September the poppies in the Remembrance Field will grow rapidly.