Category Archives: gardens

gardens

Treasures in a garden dome

05 Monday Mar 2018

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Dedicated to J, master gardener

Out and around the dome garden and back. Why not? I garb up: sunscreen, fly spray, sandals, floppy hat, and of course camera: two cameras in fact. The electric fence is switched off and the recalcitrant bush-carpentry gate open. I do not – will not – think about the black snake and the goanna who have once or twice breached security to slither, legless or savage-clawed, amongst the tall tasseling corn. I’m not afraid of the quail and the wonga pigeons who have also managed to evade electric shock, and I know there won’t be a resident wombat or wallaby: they’ve learnt the hard way to keep out.

I walk along an avenue of corn, arming aside the long leaves and breaking the odd spider web. I’m amongst a sea, an ocean of green. The green fragrance of tomatoes not yet ripe and their self-striped sleek greenness.The alien leaves of kurrajongs, seventeen seedlings from a street tree in Batemans Bay. The sombre needle-like leaves of rosemary. The feathery tops of carrot and dill. The abrasive leaves and curled yellow flowers of zucchini. The ovate-lanceolate leaves of beans. The plump-veined leaves of basil and spinach. The elongated scallops of coral lettuce. The green serrations of the white radish.

But the real star of this garden dome is the corn

KONICA MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERA
KONICA MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERA
KONICA MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERA
KONICA MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERA
KONICA MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERA
KONICA MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERA

And, of course, the Gardener.

The corn is now harvested, blanched and frozen, and we’ve been enjoying the garden produce in a variety of ways, not least of which is visual.

Last day in Melbourne 

02 Friday Jun 2017

Posted by in art, gardens, photos

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This post is to say thank you to Desley who met me for breakfast in the middle of a monumentally busy schedule. For once “the best coffeee in …” lived up to the hype, and we chatted over two cups and a classy Melbourne breakfast.

My date with Desley nearly came unstuck because I can’t read maps, paper or Google. Nor can I follow g-map verbal instructions. But I can ask a man in a hard-hat, at least in Australia, and that’s how I found Seven Seeds, pretty well spot on time, although I almost walked right past it. The buzz of conversation behind an anonymous door prevented that disaster.

Breakfast set me up for a day of walking, beginning at the war memorial. 

After its grandiloquence it was a relief to reach the Botanical Gardens and more humble buildings built to suit their more practical functions: an observatory, a small building for the study of magnetism, and a house whose purpose I have forgotten.

After days absorbed by the city, it is a relief to walk on soft green grass and be towered over by trees. I follow the camellia walk and then venture via rainforest into the Chinese plantings, passing two special trees on the way. I suspect I’m not a city person at heart. I felt at home particularly amongst tree ferns, buttress roots, splotchy bark, and the sound of gurgling water. I’ve been a long time out of rainforest. 






I leave the gardens at Gate H, and head back towards the city along the lunchtime jogging trail bordered by shapely plants chosen for sturdiness, accompanied by the smell of sweat and spurts of dust as joggers pant past.

I’m heading towards the Australian section of the National Gallery of Victoria for a quick look at their Aboriginal gallery, but first there’s a sculptural treat in the parkland leading to Federation Square.

The gallery taunts me with far too many possibilities for the short time left. I certainly can’t resist the corrugated iron (Rosalie Gascoigne created the horizontals; Victor Meertens the verticals; time the materials) …

… but I’m really here for something else, which turns out to be bark paintings, weaving and basket work by women artists. The natural colours of country affect me the same way rainforest does. Again, I feel at home.





The Aboriginal artists are Nonggirrnga Marawili (bark paintings);  Linda Ganyila Guyula (woman’s string hat); Mary Muyungu (string bag with shells); Margaret Robyn Djunginy (suite of woven bottles); Delissa Walker (baskets with shells); Yalakupu 1 (string bag with feathers); Mary Mutumurruwuy (fish net); Elizabeth Djutarra (woven floor mat).


That’s not the end of my day. There’s still Australia Opera’s performance of “Carmen” to come.

All Saints Garden, Bodalla

08 Tuesday Mar 2016

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The prelude to this post is yet another confession of obliviousness to what’s on my doorstep. For ten years, Kelly Kershaw has been creating a garden on the outskirts of Bodalla, open at weekends, and I’ve only just registered it. On a warm Sunday morning, my last in Australia for a year, I finally went down the rutted track off the highway to visit. I had a long yarn to Kelly who gave me a graphic account of her surprise when she won the golden spade award from Gardening Australia and of the slow development of the garden and the bed and breakfast. She told me that the garden itself would guide me on the circuit around it as indeed it did.

The delights were many as I proceeded through the twelve hedge-created rooms, with far prospects over farmland and out to the mountains, and near prospects of the garden itself. Espaliered fruit trees; a small orchard of fig trees, all from the same parent; ceramic bowls of water; rusty iron butterflies and rabbits; old timber transformed; rock features; and a number of garden nooks with charming seats. The flowers were past their best as autumn encroaches. I’ll visit again in spring 2017.



  

  


  

    

      
For the All Saints own gallery of photos see here