Meet the grower
This free-wheeling gardener enjoys the best of all worlds with her flourishing fruit, vegies and flowers,
Fruit, vegies and cut flowers all flourish in this patch in the Hunter Valley, NSW
While many people spent their 2020 lockdown in front of the TV or buried in a book, Stacie and husband Trent built a house. “We got to lock-up stage in three months,” she laughs. “It took about 12 months to finish, with just the two of us working on it – all with two children!”
Their new house, which is situated on a hillside in Vacy in the Hunter Valley of New South Wales, is sited towards the front of their 1.6ha property. The main garden area is skirted by a couple of paddocks that are home to a handful of sheep. Fruit trees, including lemonade, mandarin and feijoa, form a visual barrier between the chook sheds and serried ranks of flowerbeds, and the whole patch is protected by a dense windbreak garden.
“It’s filled with natives, old man saltbush, succulents and small trees,” Stacie says. “It helps to slow down the westerly winds blowing through the vegie patch.”
Out the front, a rustic gate and archway, which is smothered in ‘Cécile Brünner’ roses and pink pandorea, makes for an enticing entry into the garden. “Trent made the arch out of an old trampoline frame,” explains Stacie. “Pretty much the first thing you see is the pizza oven, which he built out of new and re-loved bits and pieces we’ve saved over the years.”
Completing this outdoor dining and living space are a pergola and the ‘farm-stand bar’, so-called because that’s exactly what Stacie’s initial impression was when she saw what Trent had built. “It looked just like one of those roadside stands where they sell vegies and eggs,” she laughs.
“It’s made from hardwood and rusty fence panels saved from an old cottage we renovated a while back.” The bar and oven get a good workout, particularly in winter, when the warm west-facing spot is a bonus, compared to the summer, when this aspect is something to be avoided in
the region’s typically fierce summer heat. “Mind you, now the house is built, it blocks out some of the western sun, so we’ll be able to use that area more in summer.”
To frame this welcoming nook, Stacie has installed 10 raised vegie beds, edged and intermingled with flowering plants, such as pansies, violas and alyssum. “I’m not a very organised gardener,” she says. “I don’t really plan anything; I just go with the flow.
“My gardening style is definitely a mix of cottage, whimsy and romance. I love to grow vegies, but I also want everything to look beautiful, so I tuck lots of flowers in everywhere and let most things self-seed and grow where they land.”
One example is the poppies –“thousands and thousands”, Stacie reckons – that have self-seeded over the years. “Pretty much all I have to do now is ‘edit’ them because once they get to a certain size, I can’t bring myself to pull them out.”
ideas in bloom
Stacie’s passion for gardening harks back to her childhood in Cootamundra, in New South Wales’ Riverina region. “I spent the first part of my life on my grandparents’ farm, and the pull to return to that lifestyle has never left me,” she says. “I used to grow vegies when I was a kid, but got more into growing flowers until my first son was born. After he arrived, I started
to become more aware of the pesticides and nasty chemicals used to grow our food commercially, so it became all about growing healthy food for our family.”
Stacie started with standard vegetable varieties – cucumber and butter beans are still favourites – but she quickly turned to others that aren’t so readily available, such as Glass Gem corn, and Black Russian and black cherry tomatoes. She’s persevering with cane berries, too. “I’m hoping that this is the year. I have flowers on the vines, so fingers crossed!”
But flowers have always been Stacie’s first love. Formerly a jeweller by trade, she is in her second year of studying floristry, and intends to use her own flowers for her work. “When the kids were little, I’d walk around thinking, what can I do with this land so I don’t have to leave them… Then I thought, why not grow flowers?”
That was four years ago, and now Stacie has about a dozen 9m-long beds, where she grows bee-friendly flowers, including daisies, cornflowers, Queen Anne’s lace, lavender, rudbeckia, sweet william, zinnia and salvia. She’s already plotting the next stage. “Our other paddock is used to move the sheep across,” she says, “but I’m thinking of expanding into there next.”
In the end, be it flowers or vegetables, gardening brings its own rewards. “It’s love, it’s food for my soul, it’s my daily recharge,” says Stacie. “I get a real kick out of sharing our produce with friends and family, and I love seeing people’s reaction to the garden when they visit. Kids who visit are out of the car and into the shed, gathering buckets to collect eggs before Mum and Dad have unbuckled their seatbelts. We built this garden not only for us, but for everyone who comes here, and I love that.”
THIS PAGE, CLOCKWISE FROM TOP
Beans grow near zinnia and cosmos; celosia seedlings, grapes and a jug of cosmos in the glasshouse; dianthus and carrots; a bucket of zinnia blooms; celery, radish and pansies.
OPPOSITE, CLOCKWISE FROM TOP
Petunias, beans and squash; a rich harvest; Atlantic Giant pumpkin; eggplant, pattypan squash and capsicum; Stacie gets to work.