SEASIDE CHARM
When I led a tour of Tasmanian gardens last spring, Eggs and Bacon Bay Cottage was the group’s favourite garden. It is a garden with charm, colour and location.
And, despite its small size, it also has the wow factor and garden owner Anne Le Fevre knows how to present it.
After she greeted my group, she led us around a small side path that wound under vines along the side of the house. As we straightened up and stepped on to the back veranda we saw the garden below against the backdrop of sparkling water. It was a definite wow moment.
Anne regularly opens her garden to visitors and that opening time is coming up next weekend (October 26-27). The garden is simply made with rock-edged garden beds surrounded by lawn and spread across the sloping site. The beds are filled with treasures including roses, perennials and bulbs with many named cultivars.
Challenging location
This is a garden that has taken on the challenges of a sloping site, a waterfront location and buffeting winds. It is also south facing, which isn’t always ideal for the growing of sun-loving cottage garden plants. It is also dependent on an often-meagre supply of tank water.
“One upside of being close to the sea is that we don’t get any frosts, so I can grow tropical and frost-tender plants,” adds Anne.
It was a bush site almost 20 years ago when Anne began to improve the depleted soil by adding organic matter. When she started to plant she concentrated on selections that would be able to cope with the harsh and usually dry conditions — especially through summer — but she also has planted lots of rare bulbs such as the trout lily and fritillaria.
“Salvias in particular thrive here, so I have built up a huge collection over the years,” she says. She also has many different euphorbias, iris and South African bulbs including ixias and a really deep blue babiana.
“My many roses have mostly been grown from cutting and they are all perfumed — I don’t see any point otherwise.”
Keep a look out for a particularly treasured small pink heritage rose that Anne says is tiny but has a huge perfume.
Also flowering will be wisteria — not just the blue but also a white form and a lovely pink one too.
Plants for sale
As well as having the chance to wander through this lovely flower-filled garden, visitors can take a bit of it home. It’s not only roses that Anne grows from cuttings. She has a large potting shed area that’s always brimful of cuttings and seedlings from the garden and admits that she can’t help putting things in pots.
“A lot of my time is spent running up and down the hill to my nursery to put those seedlings or cuttings in that otherwise would be thrown out,” she admits.
There’ll be lots of plants for sale at bargain basement prices of $3 to $7 (a few larger ones are $10). I am still enjoying the red-stemmed sorrel she pressed into my hand as the group was leaving her garden. It’s growing beautifully and colourfully in my vegie patch.
Also open next weekend
To make the trip to Eggs and Bacon Bay a full day of garden experiences, Anne’s garden opens in conjunction with Crawleighwood, a large and beautiful garden at Nicholls Rivulet. Both are open October 26-27 from 10am to 4.30pm. Entry to Eggs and Bacon Bay Cottage (10 Craypoint Parade, Eggs and Bacon Bay) is $5 while entry to Crawleighwood (51 Underwoods Road, Nicholls Rivulet) is $7.
The local Lions Clubs will hold a sausage sizzle and serve tea and coffee at both.