Sisters and gardens

The two sisters, corn and beans

are thriving together.

The beans are reaching for the sky

supported by their sister the corn.

The corn is loving the boost of nitrogen from the beans

and cobs are forming.

Now you may ask, what have hydrangeas

have to do with this post?

Fair question...read on.

  

I posted these because they always trigger

a memory of my father who

was a fabulous gardener and mentor

to his four daughters...who all love gardening.

A couple of them have 'downsized' as they have

grown older but can all speak authoritatively

about plants and gardening.

Here is my dad's garden.

Perhaps it is more correct to say this WAS my dad's garden.

You will have to imagine it. 

What you can see is about half of the block.

Just in front of the house, there were two large maples

that kept the little house cool in summer

but let the sun in the north facing windows in winter.

Also a pergola on that front terrace roofed with an ornamental grape vine.

At the foot of the maples a garden/rockery

with prostate juniper.  In later years, a row of jonquils 

in an arc, popped up each spring along the front.

In front of this bed was the 'top lawn'.

It was a tough buffalo lawn

which gave you a rash if you sat on it

but was lovely and green most of summer.

Just where that remnant bit of plant is, to the left of the drive,there was a japonica that always shouted 'Spring' when it flowered on its bare branches.

To the left of this was a group of yellow box

supporting a rustic arch made from tree branches

with honeysuckle clambering over.

Walking from the top lawn through the honeysuckle arbor

you would reach the bottom lawn.

On one side there was a huge canna bed

which was a riot of colour when it flowered.

At the front of the block there was a hedge

with massed berries in the autumn.

To the right of the honeysuckle arbor 

 (our left in the photo but outside the frame)

was the 'May Walk' which was a curved path 

bordered with May bushes (of course) 

Elderberry and other shrubs.

I remember there were red hot pokers, 

and arum lillies in there...

 and salvia bushes and bearded iris.

Above the May Walk (ie towards the back of the block)

was a huge organic vegetable garden that kept the family fed.

Dividing the vegetable garden from the top lawn

was a climbing rose on some sort of support

and three crab apple trees,

one pink, one white and one red

which flowered in sequence in spring.

Behind the vegetable garden were some fruit trees.

Apple trees and a plum tree with huge 

purple-skinned fruit and yellow flesh.

Beside the house (to our left looking at the photo) was another hedge with an arched opening.  It had little pink flowers.  Once dad grew enormous cosmos in front of the house just there.  They were taller than him. I don't remember these, but there is a photo.

If you walked through the opening in the hedge, up beside the house, there was an elegantly wide curved lawn path with stepping stones set on the diagonal. Between the path and the house there was a snowball tree (don't know the real name but it provided a satisfying faux snow-fall when shaken)  and large lush hydrangeas....that's the link. This was always my favourite bit of the garden.

Up behind the house there was a clothesline and a lemon tree.

Behind these was a huge raspberry patch.

At the very back was the chook shed and the compost bays.

Along the back of the fence was a collection of trees...

some planted by Dad and others originally on the block.

Now if you look at this photo, imagine to the right of the drive an oak tree about a quarter of the way up. My sister HDW planted that as an acorn. It was about sixty years old, but never grew to its full potential because of the soil and competition from a tree next door.

Further up the drive, also on the right

was a huge Pin Oak, a Claret Ash, and a Golden Ash 

which combined to create a riot of colour in Autumn.

I feel sorry for the people in the unit next door.

That Pin Oak shaded their house in the Summer,

let the light in in Winter and provided 

something to look at as well as privacy...gone!

At the top of the drive, behind the house were

Cootamundra wattles and Prunus trees

providing colour in Winter and spring

as well as shelter for the wood heap.

When Mum and Dad bought the land

back in 1940 for 120 pounds

it was lightly treed with Yellow Box.

Typical of the open eucalypt bush in this area

with native grasses and wildflowers underneath.

Lots of the original trees remained in the garden.

Yellow Box take many years to mature

and some may have been a hundred years old.

That Dad established a lush garden on this land at all is amazing.  The top soil in these parts is poor and layered begrudgingly over stone and rock.  But with good gardening practices, lots of animal poo and compost and hard work he created a haven for himself and his family that was both beautiful and abundant.

Over forty years ago the block was sub-divided and

one of my sisters and her husband bought

the part where the original veggie patch was.

They raised their family there

and their living room windows look out

across the bottom part of Mum and Dad's garden.

The garden I describe here is the garden of my childhood.

Over the years it changed.  When the block was split,

the vegetable garden moved up to where the raspberries had been.

This will be the format remembered

by most of the grand children.

 Generally the garden deteriorated as age wearied the gardener.

  He has been gone for a couple of decades now

 and the garden was maintained by family

and finally by contractors...

 men with mowers and whipper-snippers

while Mum still lived there.

Some of the trees remained until two days before Christmas. 'Progress' came in the form of a team of men with chainsaws, climbing equipment, a wood chipper and stump grinder.

No tree or plant was immune.

The century old Yellow Box

and all the sixty year old trees planted by our Dad.

Including the two eucalypts I gave him

when I first started work.  Both tall and healthy,

one nested in by a Tawny Frogmouth. 

Both of these were in front of the set-back...

i.e. in front of where the developer 

will be permitted to build and would 

have looked great in the front yard.

My sister saved a particularly large Yellow Box

on the fence line. From her discussion with the contractor,

it would have gone too if she hadn't been there.

I am not against progress per se. 

We sold the block...to a developer and obviously

had some idea about what he had planned.

As my wise Brother in law said,

Mum is getting the benefit of her asset.

She is being well taken care of in the aged care 

facility just down the road and the money from the sale

of the property forms the bond for her care while she

lives there.  It had to happen, but it makes me so

sad that it can be wiped out so completely

and with such little disregard in just a single day.

But if I have it bad, what about the sister

who lives next door and has to look at it all?

She has spent all but about four years

of her life on this land.

To add insult to injury, her garden was shredded by 

the freak storms that went through on Christmas Day.

Her garden looks just like Phoebe's at Ballynoe Cottage

which is just a couple of kilometres away.

All the disturbed top soil from Dad's

garden was washed away in the storm too.

It is probably somewhere near Phoebe's by now.

At least, when my sister visited yesterday,

 I was able to give her some seedlings

and plants from the greenhouse

to get her started again.

Isn't gardening a funny thing?

It is more than a hobby, I think.  

It can be such a joy and such a trial.

Vegetable gardening is a beast of its own.

There is something about growing food

and sustaining yourself and your family

that leaves its mark deep inside.

I wonder what will become of my garden

...and the gardens of all my blogger friends in the future?