MEMORY LANE
A childhood experience inspired plantsman Perry Lane to blur the lines between cultivated and untamed in his wild Victorian garden.
Pretty native and exotic perennials line a path up to the house. They include white-flowering love-in-a-mist ( Nigella damascena), grey germander ( Teucrium racemosum), sea holly ( Eryngium x zabelii), flowering tobacco ( Nicotiana), globe thistle ( Echinops ritro ‘Veitch’s Blue’) and tall-spired white moth mullein ( Verbascum blattaria f. albiflorum), their delicate forms gleaming at first light.
When I was a kid, I remember passing a building site in Melbourne where terrace houses had been demolished and the land cleared, ready for a new development. The site was covered in flowering ‘weeds’ and it impressed on me a sense of how beautiful nature could be in the city, and how it knew what to do to repair itself. That experience set the tone for the kind of beauty I’ve been pursuing in my gardens ever since.
Seeing pictures of the High Line in New York years later affirmed exactly that aesthetic – of the disturbed site with its colonising weeds – made into a beautiful and site-appropriate contemporary garden. I have always been attracted to the atmosphere of neglected sites, railway lines, cemeteries, vacant lots and abandoned farmhouses, and intrigued by the opportunistic plants that colonise them. These semi-wild places are incredibly inspiring and instructive to me. They provide a model and inspiration for my garden designs. I find more and more that I’m closest to capturing and interpreting the essence of that wildness when I embrace the beauty of each distinct season and resist the temptation to civilise the garden too much.
Kooroocheang is 20 minutes outside Daylesford, in central Victoria, and was once a bustling community on the Cobb & Co coach route through the goldfields. Now it’s a quiet farming community. The land is very flat, with no obstructions from horizon to horizon and a 180-degree view of the sky. Time passes attuned to the natural rhythm of the day, the season and the year.
My property is 8ha, mostly cleared, and on fairly heavy loam. It has been organic for at least 40 years. I have always gardened organically and feel passionately about the benefits. A shelterbelt of mature trees to the south, east and west embraces the house andmakesastrongbackdrop.Ihavedesignedaxesandsightlines, framing views of Lalgambook (Mount Franklin) to the east, Mount KooroocheangtothewestandLanjanuc(MountAlexander) 60km to the north, past the Yandoit hills, bringing the landscape into the garden so the planting is experienced in relation to the wider countryside. I’ve balanced the need for shelter with openness and integration with the landscape, being careful not to obstruct views or impede winter sunlight – in Kooroocheang, the landscape is part of the garden.
In this sort of environment, where everything bleaches to straw in the heat of summer, an emerald-green lawn and a riot of colour from lush plants, all fattened up with irrigation, looks and feels jarringly artificial. When I drive the gravel roads around here, I feel inspired by the roadside plants and uncontrived combinations: self-sown fruit trees, wild roses and huge swathes of escaped weeds such as Echium vulgare and alliums, as if
mass-planted. Against a backdrop of blackwood and eucalyptus trees grows a sweep of native grasses: broad strips of reddish Themeda merging with paler Poa and Austrodanthonia, punctuated by the dark stems of emergent herbs and forbs. Illuminated by low afternoon light, it’s a raw, epic landscape.
My approach to planting is experimental, improvisational and intuitive. My garden is an opportunity to observe, learn, engage and co-create with nature. The planting is extremely dynamic year to year. Allowing self-seeding is fundamental to my approach, contributing around 60 per cent of the plants in the garden each year. I’ve become adept at identifying seedlings, andwhenvolunteerplantsemergeIappraisetheirusefulnessand consider whether I’ll leave them in situ or transplant elsewhere.
The garden is planted with perennials, grasses, bulbs, biennial and annual plants, and there’s a long-term succession in place, where small trees will eventually grow up to provide more shade and shelter and, in turn, provide opportunities for more diverse plantings. The natural weather cycles are harsh here, with very distinct seasons – at the end of summer, without rain or irrigation, growth pretty much stops, and exuberant spring and early summer growth is all in seed. Early autumn colours are bleached, muted and diffuse: straw, silvery-green, blue-green, black, brown, burnt orange and off-white. This faded palette harmonises with the landscape beautifully: the bleached and blackened growth forms a protective layer for strongly sprouting new shoots and provides habitat for wildlife.
Some years I don’t deadhead, water or prune anything. This hands-offapproachisallaboutholdingmynerveandappreciating the beauty in the natural cycle. It has given me moments of feeling an absolutely immersive and tangible magic.