MEMORABLE GARDENS
GARDEN WRITER CHRISTINE REID REVEALS SOME OF HER FAVOURITE COUNTRY GARDENS FROM OVER THE YEARS.
Garden writer Christine Reid recalls some of the most impressive gardens she’s seen over the years.
“WHAT’S YOUR FAVOURITE GARDEN?” As any garden writer will tell you, this is the most frequently asked question as soon as anyone finds out that writing about gardens — whether historic, contemporary, Australian or international — is your professional occupation. The answer to the question can be fraught with disaster. If the person whose garden you’ve just visited is standing next to you, they will be expecting a ringing endorsement of their hard work. The late respected nursery owner, Valerie Swane, used to say it was the garden she last visited. I tend to go for a ‘hedge your bets’ answer, which is that I don’t have one particular favourite but a selection of favourites. Many gardens are special to me for a variety of reasons — the plants, the design, the ambience and even admiration at the challenge undertaken to get a garden to grow at all. Some of the favourites I have visited over the years for Country Style are pictured on these pages and show a range of gardens that I admire. Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons should be the musical theme for all gardeners. Seasonal beauties are really how most of us, rightly or wrongly, measure a garden’s merit — daffodils and spring blossom, summer’s roses, fabulous autumn perennials and falling leaves. But winter, when the bones of the garden are laid bare can be a revealing time to visit. I do have a lot of admiration for gardeners who take on the challenge of making a garden in difficult conditions. That can be anything from planting a hillside in an old goldmining area, such as Greg Lyons’s extraordinarily ambitious garden at Creswick, Victoria, or the restoration of a garden after bushfires as at Picardy in Gippsland. The stories of clearing the mess and carting away rubbish, the before-and-after pictures and stories are all worth listening to and recording. So, too, are the stories of recovery from natural disasters, which are all too frequent in this country — years of work wrecked by flood or drought. >
Why people garden is also an endlessly fascinating question and one that has no predictable answer. Finding gardens to feature in Country Style is often the result of happy accidents. Word of mouth is one of the best ways to hear about a garden to visit. For example, photographer Simon Griffiths and I were having a coffee one morning when a friend asked if we had visited the Murphys’ garden at Pipers Creek. We drove out to look at the daffodils and found the amazing topiary — a great feature that was found by a chance encounter. Sometimes photographers, such as the talented Claire Takacs, find fabulous gardens on their travels. That was the case with Tasmania’s Wychwood garden and the beautiful garden at Bryan’s Ground in the UK’S Herefordshire. The English garden has long been a favourite of mine and is owned by my friends Simon Dorrell and David Wheeler. I suggested to Claire that she visit them and she returned with stunning pictures of their property. It is fair to say almost all gardeners want you to see their garden when it’s at its best — maybe it’s the second week in October when the lawns are still green and lush with spring growth or late April when the crabapples are hanging on to their fruit or a quince walk is aglow with golden orbs. This is entirely reasonable; there’s not much point in wanting to smell the roses when they are not in bloom. Most of the gardens I count as favourites have roses in them. My paternal grandfather, an Englishman, although addicted to trees, was also a great fan of Alister Clark’s roses and one of my earliest memories is of smelling the large red blooms of ‘Black Boy’ roses which he had trained up the veranda posts. From hybrid tea roses, the bold and beautiful such as ‘Bantry Bay’ and modern climber ‘Altissimo’, to the more delicate colours of David Austin’s charmingly named plants, roses are a drawcard for me. It’s always a highlight and a thrill to see roses growing in a garden that I’ve only previously seen in books. The roses at Clive West and Eric Savage’s Rose Cottage in Berrima are hidden from the roadside view, but they are a gorgeous surprise when you wander into the inner garden. Empathy with fellow gardeners comes naturally to me as I am a hands-on gardener myself, and when writing inspiration fails, an hour’s weeding or a session with my secateurs is extremely therapeutic. Artist Lucy Culliton also finds inspiration in her garden in the Monaro district. A reflection of its owner, her garden is vibrant and colourful, and will be open for the public to admire during the Nimmitabel Open Garden Day in April 2018. I do believe that gardening is a genetic disease and it’s one that gives the greatest pleasure. Years ago I read somewhere that ‘the process is the purpose’ and so it is.