Chasing the dream in Tassie
Five years ago, Jennifer Stackhouse moved from the mainland to north-west Tasmania, so she could grow trilliums, clematis and other cool-climate favourites. We drop by to see how the move has panned out
Where to look first? It’s the middle of spring in Tasmania, and as Jennifer Stackhouse swings the car onto her property and I jump out to open the gate, there’s a lot to take in. Pink cherry blossom trees flanking the driveway down to the house command attention, but on a more macro level, so does a mound of blue flowers (Lithodora diffusa ‘Grace Ward’) near the gate. Fat bumblebees – rogue but very cute residents of the island – are bobbing all over it, humming like tiny jets.
The driveway extends past areas of lawn ringed by mature trees and shrubs, which include towering waratahs in full, flaming bloom. But perhaps the real eye-catcher today is the laburnum arch that connects car spot and house. Six plants rising from the base of six posts join in an overhead symphony of yellow panicles. Beneath it, on one side, is an establishing woodland garden, vibrant with red tulips, Spanish bluebells, lily-of-the-valley and the start of a trillium collection. And just past the arch, on the other side, Clematis montana is starting to unfurl its flowers along a picket fence.
We head for the late Victorian, early Federation weatherboard house where Jennifer – a horticulturist, gardening writer and former editor of this magazine – lives with her husband, Jim Taylor. Pots of clivias, daisies, succulents, pansies and a loosely clipped buxus line the steps to the front door. The interior of the house is painted in rich tones, and the air is fragrant with the evening’s slow-cooked casserole. The dogs, Luca and Dora, are happy to see their mum. Jennifer is home. Home sweet home.
THE FIRST YEAR
Jennifer and Jim knew they wanted to buy the place before they even got out of the car. They drove a few metres inside the gate, parked outside what is now
Jim’s workshop and, without having even seen the house, looked at each other and said, “This is it. It’s beautiful.”
They made an offer on the spot, and returned to Sydney to tell startled family and friends that their long-term desire to move to Tasmania was coming to fruition sooner than expected. They were moving to Barrington in north-west Tasmania – about 75 minutes’ drive west of Launceston, and 20 minutes from Devonport.
Moving day was in the middle of winter. They arrived a day ahead of their furniture, and scrapped together a dinner from the vegie patch. There were brussels sprouts, potatoes and greens, plus scarlet runner beans. And there were eggs! A present from the chooks for their new owners.
Those first few months were special, watching the dormant garden slowly come to life, starting with the daffodils. It was like an extended Christmas, says Jennifer, a series of ‘reveals’ as plant after plant leafed up and flowered. She was kept busy identifying the new plants in her care – including the laburnum arch, which was bare sticks when they arrived. “I was looking at it, thinking, what on earth is this plant? It’s some sort of pea plant
– I could tell by the pods and the growth. And then someone came to visit me and said, ‘I see you’ve got a laburnum arch’!”
For a year, Jennifer and Jim did little but observe the shifting seasons and remove weeds and dead plants. Weedy Tradescantia spp. – an allergen to dogs – was pulled from a woodland area that’s home to bluebells, daffodils and hellebores. A non-flowering wisteria next to the conservatory was found to be dead… or so it seemed. As they foraged around, clearing the area, they came across shoots, and these stems were trained back up, the dead stems pruned off, and the plant restored as a beautiful feature.
There were also trees that had to come out, including an enormous alder that was thumping its branches on the bedroom roof. “It was the wrong tree in that spot, too close to the house,” says Jennifer. “I think it self-sowed and was never removed, when it should have been.”
MAKING IT THEIR OWN
One of the main things Jennifer and Jim have done is open up the garden and improve the sightlines. “When we arrived, it was really a series of enclosed gardens,” Jennifer says. They couldn’t see the house at all from the top of the driveway, and handsome Mount Roland, a backdrop to this region, was missing in action. Jennifer loves mountains, and recalls how they once went to inspect a property that was on a mountain. “I realised that I didn’t want to be on a mountain,” she laughs, “I only wanted to look at one!”
To bring Mount Roland back into view, they cut a window in a viburnum hedge that had been allowed to grow tall to keep out the cold; and they underpruned a lot of trees to open things up. Most dramatically, they removed a giant philadelphus that was obliterating the view of the mountain from the conservatory.
“It didn’t flower that well, and it hadn’t been pruned,” explains Jennifer. “As far as I was concerned, it was occupying prime real estate. I said to Jim, ‘I want you to get your chainsaw and prune that viciously.’ He was hesitant to use the chainsaw, but once he started… within three seconds flat, we’d removed it.
The root ball is still in there and we are chipping away at it but if I keep thinning the canes, it won’t engulf the area again.”
Having dealt with the philadelphus, Jennifer turned her attention to the species roses. They were super thorny, and the flowering season was brief. Despite loving roses, Jennifer decided to give them to a friend with a large rose garden, and replace them with cultivars that climb up metal tripods sourced from a metalworker in nearby Port Sorell. These are now paired with sweet peas and dianthus, and in summer are flanked by dahlias and penstemon, in a more open arrangement that frames the view of the mountain.
As she reworks areas of the garden, Jennifer is mindful of the colour themes started by the previous owner. There are areas of pink and yellow, and others of red, white and blue. “I can see from the way she used colour in the house that colour mattered to Margaret, and it’s a good way to structure your garden.”
Another area that has changed a lot is the back garden, especially the part you gaze out at from the kitchen sink.
This is where the vegie beds initially were – but they were huge, edged with rotting sleepers, and overrun with oxalis.
“It was very hard to grow crops, because as soon as you start to cultivate ground invaded by oxalis, it just makes it worse,” Jennifer says. “We decided after a year it was futile. We had lots of vegies, but we couldn’t control the oxalis. You can’t dig it up on that scale, can’t poison it – well, we didn’t want to, and the poisons don’t work – and other remedies such as putting down carpet and smothering them didn’t appeal. I couldn’t look out at that for years.”
That area is now lawn, and the oxalis is mown into submission. Fruit trees dot the lawn, from cherries to apricots and plums. These are in addition to the established orchard of apples, pears and raspberries. The chooks are allowed to forage here
– it’s right next to the chook pen. And facing that is the newly developed vegie area, with neat beds brimming with young silverbeet, lettuce, beetroot and myriad other crops, which we pinch leaves from
for one of our meals. “The vegies here just taste better,” says Jennifer. “It’s the soil.”
Jennifer and Jim don’t always agree on what needs to be done. Outside the conservatory, for instance, there’s a row of sasanqua camellias that Jennifer says never flowered. Then she did a topiary course, which included cloud pruning, at nearby property Old WesleyDale. “I came home, grabbed the secateurs and started pruning under the sasanquas to bare their trunks. You should have heard Jim yelling at me, ‘What the hell are you doing?’ I said, ‘Wait, and you’ll see.’ Now they’re a more interesting group of plants, Jim is quite happy with them, and he prunes them, too.”
GARDENERS’ PARADISE
This part of Tasmania is nirvana for anyone wanting to garden, and travelling around the countryside with Jennifer as guide, I realise that an awful lot of people have come here to do just that.
“This one is an organic herb farm,” she says, explaining how they produce essences and tinctures that are bottled for markets around the world.
“As we go over this bridge, everything to the left is Bob Cherry’s new place,” she says, referring to the horticultural legend of the New South Wales Central Coast who has now decamped to Tassie, where he continues his breeding work.
“That place has a wonderful produce garden…” And on it goes.
With high annual rainfall and volcanic soil, the growing is easy. There is casual beauty everywhere, with blossom trees in full splendour lolling around on verges, in front gardens, in parks, beside shops. There are rhododendrons in screaming pink, ceanothus in moody blue, apples and cherries in white and pink blossom. Small-flowered clematis cling to fences. At one point, I gasp and swing around in my seat at a dense clump of the most sublime orange I’ve ever seen. “Oh, that’s a deciduous azalea,” Jennifer says. Having only ever known the evergreen type, I roll those words – and that hue – around in my head for several minutes.
Jennifer has immersed herself in the local gardening scene, and is involved in several garden clubs, and a street-planting project in her nearest town, Sheffield. Being a member of the garden clubs gives her entry to interesting gardens in the area, as well as a developing network of friends who share her passion. She opens her own garden now to groups – about 250 people from as far afield as north Queensland and Western Australia came through last spring.
It’s time for me to go. As I linger by the front door, I’m struck by a show of white at the end of the pathway. “Yes, it’s beautiful,” Jennifer agrees. “It’s Viburnum plicatum, probably ‘Lanarth’ or a cultivar like that.
It’s lovely for its horizontal branching structure. Look at the bees! It lasts for ages. Then, all of a sudden, it’s gone.
“That’s a lovely thing about this garden. It’s a series of plants having a major spectacle. Right now it’s viburnum and rhododendron… and the laburnum is taking over. Next will be the ‘Pierre de Ronsard’ roses. There’s always something – and in this climate, it lasts for ages.”
Jennifer came for the climate, the water, the fellowship of other gardeners. She has the apple trees she’s always wanted, the right conditions to grow snowdrops and trilliums, and enough space to experiment with a huge array of cool-climate plants – exotic and native, ornamental and edible. She also has a constant stream of visitors arriving for a little taste of this idyllic life; and I’m sure I’m not the only one who sits on the plane home wondering if one day I might make the move, too.
Turn to page 20 for a story on trilliums.