Gardening Australia’s Jane Edmanson on her country childhood
GARDENING AUSTRALIA PRESENTER JANE EDMANSON THE TV PERSONALITY ON HOW GROWING UP ON A MILDURA FRUIT FARM SHAPED HER PASSION FOR GARDENING.
MENTION THE NAME Jane Edmanson, and many will instantly think gardens. And for good reason, as Jane’s familiar face and friendly, knowledgeable style has been engaging garden lovers around the country for more than 30 years. Since Gardening Australia first went to air in 1989, Jane has been one of the presenters of the popular ABC TV program. In that time, she has also written and co-written five gardening books — “lots of how-to kind of books” — led garden tours around the world, and given countless garden talks. And always with the typical generosity of the gardening fraternity, taking with her “a big trug or bucket of whatever is looking good in my garden at that time”. Put simply, Jane appreciates plants of all descriptions —and is as fanatical about gardening as she is about passing on that passion and knowledge to others. In her early childhood, Jane, her parents, Peter and Barbara, and her younger brothers, John and Tony, lived on her grandfather’s fruit farm (known as a fruit block to Sunraysia locals) just outside Mildura in north-west Victoria. When Jane was about seven, Peter, a banker, was transferred to Melbourne and the family followed. Jane completed an arts degree and Diploma of Education and was then posted to Dimboola Memorial Secondary College in Wimmera. By this time, her father had decided to become a farmer and the family moved to a fruit block in Mourquong on the NSW side of the Murray River. Peter grew citrus and avocados while Jane’s mother Barbara was a dedicated gardener, nurturing an oasis of shade-giving trees and flowering plants around the house in the midst of the hot environment. On weekends and holidays, Jane regularly travelled the 300-kilometre trip from Dimboola to Mourquong to help. She owes her parents for giving her the gardening bug. “Mum and Dad taught me all the reasons why soil is important and because my father was a horticulturalist, he taught me the value of having good soil and being a guardian of it, and my mum was a great gardener. All of their knowledge within the horticultural arena came onto me,” she says. However, it was in Dimboola that Jane’s interest in plants really deepened. “Right next to Dimboola was the Little Desert National Park, and it was filled with native plants,” she says. “I had no idea what they were, so it was the young kids I was teaching who identified them for me!” The school’s headmaster encouraged Jane to study horticulture, which she did at Oakleigh Technical School, and the then Burnley Horticultural College (now The University of Melbourne, Burnley Campus) at night, working in The Victorian Schools Nursery by day “doing all the practical things like learning how to propagate, seed sowing and pricking out for all sorts of plants”. Jane was still in her early 20s when she met the celebrated gardening legend, the late Kevin Heinze who hosted Sow What (which ran on ABC TV in Victoria from 1967 to 1988). “He and I worked at the nursery with disabled people, developing their skills for nursery work, so I knew him via that channel,” she says. “Kevin had done 20 years of Sow What and was a real mentor to me. He said he’d like to retire and would like me to take over the program, which was pretty amazing for a younger woman in those days, so I thought he was joking!” This is when Jane’s television career took off. “When I first started in 1988, I was a very green novice on television, and then my career has continued on with Gardening Australia.” After more than four decades in the horticulture industry, Jane regards herself as a gardener first, one whose passion has also led to a fulfilling and fascinating career. “I’m a people person and I really like showing how to sow carrots, grow indoor plants and prune the geranium. But I really like presenting the stories of the people in their own gardens.” > Gardening Australia’s 30th Anniversary Special, a 90-minute episode, will air on ABC and ABC iview on February 15th at 7.30pm.
Every time I smell orange blossom, I just go straight back to Mildura. When I was little, we lived on my grandfather’s farm and he grew rows and rows of oranges — come October it was just sensational to have that lovely smell and that’s what I always really remember the most. I was born in the Base Hospital in Mildura in 1950, and I’m the eldest of three — I have two younger brothers, John and Tony. My grandfather, Charlie Crofts, was a soldier settler who came back from the First World War and was given a piece of land for a fruit block at Red Cliffs [14 kilometres south east of Mildura]. Mildura was where Mum met Dad, who was a banker, a young teller, who came back from the Second World War and lived in Mildura. One of my earliest memories was with my grandfather, jumping in his funny little Austin car. He’d roar out on the sandy back roads of Mildura and we’d see kangaroos and flocks of emu. He’d slow down and wind the window down, and say to me ‘Jane, wave the handkerchief out of the window!’ The emus were so curious that they’d come and say hello. We were very lucky. I remember going along the channels, which were the old way of getting water to the trees on the farms, and we could pick beautiful wild asparagus growing there. I doubt you’d find any there now as the channels have dried up — back then they were our swimming pools. Growing up we had loads of little dogs — they always seemed to be dogs that needed a home. One was a wire-haired terrier who literally climbed the orange trees to get to the oranges. When I was about seven, my father went to Melbourne to work with the Commonwealth Bank and we all went to school in the city. In the early ’70s, I had finished a Diploma of Education at Monash University and had gone to Dimboola as a secondary school teacher when my father decided he wanted to become a farmer, a horticulturalist, and a grower of oranges, lemons, grapefruit and avocados. My parents went back with my brothers to a fruit block just outside of Mildura on the NSW side of the Murray River, on the road that goes up to Broken Hill. Dad was always the entrepreneur: he loved learning, asking people how to get the best out of everything. He would ring the CSIRO research station in Irymple and they would come out and say ‘Pete, you’ve got to do this to get the best out of your lemons’, and he became a model farmer and ran a very good farm. He went to Israel on a tour and saw how the Israelis were doing under-tree irrigation, rather than the overhead sprinklers that were so inefficient in Mildura. Dad thought this system was appropriate for Mildura and he became one of the first people in the district to use under-tree irrigation. From there on people all around the district took up that method so he was very instrumental. He did a lot in the community and later he and Mum had a tourist venture called Orange World and people would come up in busloads to look around. Dad had a little train to take them around to show them how oranges grow and where they were picked and packed. When I went home on holidays I would drive the train, and tell people about it, too. Mum had a simply wonderful garden. There’s beautiful soil up there but it’s like a desert as it’s very hot. She had a real skill growing roses with lots of David Austins and lovely perennial plants. Everyone who visited would say ‘I love that, and I love that’ and she would give them bits and pieces, dig up great clumps of plants, and she started many people’s gardens that way. Mum planted a lot of trees — kurrajongs, ash trees — and we had lots of jacarandas everywhere with their beautiful purple flowers. Jacarandas ran the whole edge of the farm along the main road and they were absolutely sensational. Those trees were so important in lowering the temperatures when we had 40-degree days. In summer Mum’s garden attracted the rainbow bee-eater, a bird with this beautiful long tail and, when it opened its wings, it was orange underneath and blue on top. They would come in flocks on exactly the same day every year and make their home in the garden, then fly away on exactly the same day four months later. They would also make their nests on the Murray River’s edge, and I used to love walking along the river under the river red gums — one of my favourite trees. I’d see flocks of budgerigars and wonderful goannas down there as well. We’d go fishing and swimming, and later when I’d go for holidays, my brothers had boats and would take us along the river. Holidays at the beach were important because they were a respite from the terrible heat we had. Mum and Dad were also big into nature, and they’d camp with us and drive to the Flinders Ranges, or the Jenolan Caves — it was no fuss, and certainly not flash camping as we’d sleep on a tarpaulin. This is where I get my love of nature came from and my love of connecting with the seasons.
“The emus were so curious that they’d come and say hello. We were very lucky.”