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Kathie Thomas

Gardening and children

As a child, I would watch my beloved grandmother in the garden and join her in her activities. I loved the flowers and plants she had in it. My paternal grandparents also loved gardening and had a vegetable garden and chickens in the backyard – and again, I would love exploring what was growing there. Their gardens were a big influence as I grew up. Mum and dad weren’t gardeners but then again, bringing up 4 children probably took up much of their time. However, when I was a teenager I did grow things in my parent’s backyard and loved the challenge of it.

This past week I was privileged to represent the Horticultural Media Association (HMA), of which I am a member, giving the journalism award to a student from Swan Hill, during the Victorian Schools Garden Awards. Until a couple of months ago I didn’t even know these awards existed. My husband and I have been very aware, though, of the passion for gardens in local schools not far from us. We first visited The Patch Primary School about 3 years ago on an open day, and I’ve also visited the Belgrave South Primary School on a couple of occasions, exploring their kitchen garden and plans for expansion – mainly through my role in a local Rotary Club.

It excites me that children of today are being taught the importance of biodiversity and how our planet and our very existence is dependent upon the tree and plant life that surrounds us. I wish we’d been taught these things when I was at school. It is my generation that has ruined many places on our planet by removing huge amounts of forests and also, therefore, threatening the continued existence of many animals in different countries. It is a sad state we’re currently in and I hope that the education of today’s children will mean that tomorrow’s adults will set about restoring and repairing some of the damage made to our planet – if it is possible.

I find, as I grow older, that there is an affinity between me and the earth and all that grows within. Just this morning I watched a baby Currawong with its parent, in our backyard and love that the local bird life call our place home too. More and more I want to be outside, rather than inside on a daily basis.

Going back to the awards event, it was opened with a traditional indigenous smoking ceremony, whereby all indigenous folk were invited to move forward first, followed by the rest of the visitors for this awards event. This is to help ward off bad spirits, acknowledge ancestors and pay respect to the land. After that we were all invited to sit as the awards presentations took place. There were a lot of excited children in the audience and so many different schools represented and yet, I feel, was only a small number really, compared to how many schools I know exist in our state.  I hope that many more schools take up this wonderful educational tool and develop a garden for the children to look after, on their own school grounds.

Some photos I took of the event below. Click on an image to view at a larger size. And congratulations to Berwick Lodge Primary School for their major prize win.

 

New discovery

I love seeing things in my garden that I’ve not seen before. I like to think it’s because we’ve been adding to the garden, the types of things our visitors like. New birds, new animals, new bees, new insects, new butterflies.

Recently my husband and I were working out in our vegetable garden, getting it ready for new plantings for the spring and summer seasons. He was about to remove a blackberry when I urged him to stop as I’d seen a blue colour on one of the leaves. Closer inspection showed a butterfly I’d never seen before.

I learnt that it’s a female Dark Pencil Blue Butterfly (Candalides absimilis). It’s quite small and can be seen here in the Dandenong Ranges but not hugely prevalent. It can be seen in all of the eastern states of Australia.

Dark Pencil Blue Butterfly

Dark Pencil Blue Butterfly

Visit to a garden designer’s garden

Been a little while since I posted here – sorry! I do post regularly at Instagram and am on Facebook too. But need to remember to post here often too.

In September, I went with a group of fellow garden lovers, to see the gardens of Phillip Johnson, a well known garden designer who lives not far from us. You may have heard of him even if you don’t live in this area, because, a few years ago, he won gold at the Chelsea Garden Show in the UK. Quite a special deal!  He showed us around his garden and then showed us the cup he received and some footage from when he won the award with colleague Wes Fleming. Such an exciting time for them.

Here are a few shots I took from his garden during that visit.

Beautiful Saturday

With a forecast of a beautiful pre-Spring day of 18C and blue skies, Graham and I decided to spend most of the day in the garden. But before we got started we went to visit a local reserve where wild orchids and other beautiful but miniature plants grow. He’d not seen it before and it was the perfect way to start the day. Came back home for a cuppa and then off to work outside.

First off we had to clear up all the dry liquidamber seed pods lying on the front lawn. They would become projectiles when he mows and our front windows would be targets, so we had to clear them up and the autumn leaves lying with them. Three and a half wheelbarrow loads later, that was done.  We used that for mulch around our rose garden in the paddock. Graham went off to clear the rest of the lawns from branches that had fallen in recent winds, in preparation for mowing. I got our wagon out and filled it with potted loropetalums, my small garden tools and camera and off to the paddock to get some more planting done. Using our Power Planter always cuts down on the amount of work required in digging holes, these days, and we get a lot more done in a session.

Graham had already loaded up our fire-pit, waiting for a suitable time to burn, as recent weeks have been incredibly windy, but today was beautiful, calm and clear and dry, and so, for the very first time, he was able to set the fire-pit alight! And it is very effective for using for burning off, as well as a camp fire or barbeque.

  

I managed to get 6 loropetalums into the ground, several succulents that had been sitting in pots for ages, a low growing banksia shrub, a Eucy Dwarf that has pretty pink flowers if the tag is correct, and several other plants. We also cut up some wire we had to create cages around the loropetalums and a native hibiscus that the wallabies (and possibly a wombat too) had been showing a taste for. It took longer to do the cage surrounds than it did to drill the holes and plant the plants. We’d been losing the flowers and leaves off these from previous plantings so had to cage things up, including our new Silver Princess Eucalypt that had also been eaten. Love the wildlife but really want our garden to grow a lot more before the wildlife decide to do some pruning for us.

Afternoon tea was spent sitting by the firepit, watching the Black Pacific and Australian Wood Ducks in our billabong and wandering around the property. Every now and then one of the maggies would swoop them and send them back to the billabong. The magpies have a nesting tree in the bottom right hand corner of the paddock and they don’t like any bird life wandering near by – even if they’re on the ground and not in the air. Was a bit comical to watch.

All in all, a very productive day for us both and such a gorgeous day to be outside virtually all day. We loved it although our backs were feeling it somewhat at the end of the day – not from planting, but from bending over to manage the wire that kept curling up and also picking up heaps of branches and twigs, etc. And, as we were packing up I noticed the late afternoon sun highlighting the beautiful Epacris Impresses (Common Heath but I don’t think of it as common) in the native garden section of our paddock.

Danger in the garden!

But not so much for us. We’re building a Garden for Wildlife Habitat and already have a variety of wild birds, possums, foxes, lizards, skinks and frogs that live here. Some birds are seasonal. We get the occasional wombat passing through – not that we’ve seen it, just the evidence that it has been here. Also wallabies and kangaroos visit and while that sounds lovely, it does mean that many of our new plants get eaten so it’s a battle to get them to grow and survive long enough to grow big enough that it won’t matter if they get nibbled on. Hope you got that!

Some seasonal visitors are ducks – currently we have Australian Wood Ducks and Black Pacific Ducks who make regular visits. Although we haven’t seen the wood ducks for a few days now so suspect they’re nesting in a tree nearby. We’ll see them again once their young are old enough to jump out of their tree nest and come and enjoy our billabong.

I mentioned ‘Danger in the Garden’. Occasionally we hear the squeal of an animal late at night and know that it’s been caught by an Owl or another raptor in the dead of night. Seems cruel and sad but that is how nature is. And this is the danger I’m talking of today. Our garden is a hunting ground for different birds and animals and, as our garden grows and develops, I’m sure that this will increase. The cycle of life.

Yesterday, I was sitting in my office at my computer and noticed movement out the corner of my eye through the window nearby. When I looked I saw a kookaburra on the garden path and it was swinging its head from side to side. I realised it was thrashing something on the ground it had caught. I grabbed my camera with the long lens to zoom in and get a closer look. It was longer and bigger than a worm or skink. And then I realised it was a frog. I felt sorry for the poor frog but what could I do? It is nature doing what it does. So I stood there at the window and captured what I was witnessing – the images aren’t as sharp as I would like but they still give you a good idea of what I saw. Sad as I was for the frog, I was also thrilled that I got to witness this first hand – a kookaburra with its prey.

Kookaburra and frog
Kookaburra and frog
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Visit to Beleura

Last week I attended an AGM which was held at Beleura House & Garden in Mornington. As well as the morning tea and  meeting, we got to do a tour of the beautiful gardens there. The original property was purchased in the 1800s by James Butchart, who had the Italianate style villa designed by the Melbourne firm of Architects Barns and Reed and built in 1863. Butchart died at Beleura in 1869.

It had a succession of owners and eventually was subdivided in the early 1900s, attracting Mr & Mrs George Tallis who had already acquired a property next door and later purchased more of the villa sites that had been in the subdivision enlarging the property to 2,000 acres in and around Mornington. It was used ultimately as farm land, however Sir George was also known as a theatrical entrepreneur and was the major shareholder and Chairman of Directors of the entertainment company J.C. Williamson Ltd who, I believe, were responsible for building a number of theatres in Melbourne.  The Tallis’ used Beleura as their seaside house and brought up four children there. Sir George died in 1948 and, by family agreement, the youngest son, Jack Morton (later known as John) inherited the property.

John Tallis was a composer of music and entertained many well known entertainers at his property, including Dame Nellie Melba. When he died the property and the Tallis Foundation was bequeathed to the people of Victoria in 1996.

The property is open for House and Garden Tours from Tuesdays to Saturdays each week for $42 or $39 Concession. Tours are by arrangement, you can’t just arrive to visit. They also have a small theatre and stage on the property and have a musical program available. you can find out more and book via their site at beleura.org.au.

Below are images from their beautiful gardens. I encourage you to take the time and go for a visit – it’s well worth it.

 

Planting and protection

Went and bought up a few more plants for the native bush area of our paddock project today. It’s going to be very wet and windy over the weekend but today was lovely and sunny, with just a bit of a breeze. So I took three hours off from work to purchase new plants and then get them in the ground. Graham came out to help me for a short while and then I continued on myself. The idea is that the rain over the weekend will well and truly water them in.

Sadly we have discovered the wallabies have been back. We found evidence of their presence in a couple of places on the ground. They’ve not been getting under the fence at their normal spot so I’ll have to walk the fence-line to find out if there’s another spot but they could be just jumping over at some spot. As a result a lorapetalum I planted two weekends ago was eaten overnight – it was fine two days ago! I’ve had to put a guard around it and I planted a new one today but put a wire guard around it, in the hope that will ward them off. Also found our new Silver Princess Eucalypt had been eaten and there are probably other things too. Seriously looking like we’re going to have to put up high fencing around some of our newly planted sections just to give the plants a chance to grow to a decent height. Currently researching the type of fencing we’ll get.

Today I put into the ground the following: Thryptomenes, two different Westringias, a White Diosma, Acacia Honey Bun, a Gingko tree – looking forward to that growing but it will be slow going, and a new Happy Wanderer Hardenbergia, which I’ve also had to put a guard around as the wallabies ate the last one. The Power Planter, as usual, made it much less work digging holes for the plants – just makes it so much easier and I don’t have to depend on my husband to do the tough work – especially if the soil is hard in places.

Below: Acacia Honey Bun. Will grow to 1.5m wide. Took less than a minute to dig the hole.

  

Below: White Diosma, Thryptomene ‘F.C. Payne’ and Westringia Sea Mist

Below: The new  Purple Prince Lorepetalum I planted today, the one that got eaten a night or two ago and the Silver Princess that has been munched on.

Below: the new Hardenbergia Happy Wanderer which will, over time, grow over an old stump we have in the paddock. I’ve put netting over it to protect it from the wallabies – I hope! The last one is sitting next to the new one – completely void of leaves.