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