The Garden at Moorfield Journal: 39
Welcome back everyone and to Moorfield all for 2024! 06.01.2024
Welcome to 2024 at Moorfield! In a month’s time, we will have been here exactly two years having moved in, in February 2022. I think you will agree much has happened in that time….
We excavated and built and planted a Rose Garden with well over 100 bushes and counting, as well as all the perennials which support their health. A Vegetable Garden, berry patch and cut flower garden which have seen their first crops, berries and dahlias this summer and will undergo an extension this year, and is awaiting it’s glasshouse this autumn, finally and a future potting shed. We have created an area we refer to as the Green Room which will be a sheltered entertaining space where we also hold future workshops.
The Long Border which has exploded so much so it has almost eclipsed the path down the middle of it in full summer froth and the new boundary hedge of 40 Portuguese Laurel to replace the very old and very invasive African Boxthorn hedgerow we had ripped out. An Orchard which includes apples, pears, apricots, plums, peaches, nectarines, cherries, crabapples, medlars and quinces, some of which stand above my head height now. The orchard awaits a stick fence, a fox proof coop and chooks, which we have missed terribly.
And of course, we can’t forget all the infrastructure near these gardens including a whole new house for my mum, new septic, a new 100,000L Tank and all new plumbing and power and miles of irrigation and the wee Malus floribunda forest, 15 of them to be precise between the homestead and mum’s cottage. And all of this, covers only the southern side of the garden and does not include the half a dozen skips that were filled with the dismantled matter of what felt like endless odds and ends installed and left lying around here that were not thoughtful or sympathetic at all to Moorfield’s heritage or beauty.
On the northern end of the property, we have created a wonderfully prolific Herb and Medicinal Garden just off the kitchen to the homestead which we often refer to as the Useful Garden but as well as useful, it is also just extremely beautiful to walk out into and watch throughout the day from my office, as the wee creatures love it too. This garden leads into a little shade garden which has really begun to fill out and is a favourite place to sit at this time of year under the cool shade of our colossal stand of four Ash Trees.
We have also installed a beautiful pool which we have been using daily and a Wattle and Wire pool fence which was as fiddly (and heavy) as the one we installed at Little Oak in Tassie, around the chook run but it is just so perfect for the space. Some of the pool’s dry garden has been shaped and planted including a few of the olives and 30 odd Nitschke’s Needles Cyprus which will line the road that will eventually lead you around to Hugo’s office, mum’s cottage and the southern side of the property. Yet much more work lies in the future for this area, beginning with the timber pool deck, the internal perennial border and lawn, a sunken sunbathing area, the outdoor kitchen, a large entertaining pergola and it’s fire place chimney stack, stone walls, stone steps, stone seating around another fire pit and the remaining olives and citrus for the area’s surrounding groves.
We have pleached the long line of Manchurian Pears across the front of the property, thanks to Remi (The Gardener) a well known master of hedges and maintainer of some of the most famous and beautiful gardens in this area and beyond who also just so happens to be our neighbour. In fact Remi has been instrumental in working with us over the last two years to help get us where we are, especially helping Hugo with irrigation and installation of fences and ponds and we look forward to working with him more into the future.
We have almost finished turning the smaller shed on the property into Hugo’s home office and music studio, his labour of love and it is turning into the most wonderful space to spend time in with friends and our little one, knocking out some tunes.
There is still so much to do, some projects in our near future, the rest will be ticked off over the years as time and money allow. We will convert the huge shed we call the Aircraft Hanger into a usuable space, including for future undercover workshops and lunches in the cooler and wetter months. We want to build a sympathtic brick building that mimics the main homestead and 1852 stone barn as a garage and indoor work space. We have a gazillion timber and stone retaining walls to build from one end of the garden to the other, a hundred or so more hedging plants to put in which I am propagating and growing on myself.
Then there is all the ironwork arbours and pergola for the rose garden, the underplantings for the Malus and Meadow garden near mum’s cottage, all the perennial gardens and the Naturalistic garden around both the homestead and the cottage. We have four giant, dying macrocarpas that are losing limbs left right and centre, to take down and turn into mulch for use in the garden and replanted with the oaks, Nessie, our little girl for newcomers grew from acorns she collected from a nationally registered oak tree planted in 1863, the year after Moorfield was built in our local botanic gardens in Castlemaine, which we so love and spend quite a lot of time in picnicing, flying kites, walking the ring road around it and using the incredible playground there.
Moorfield is no small undertaking and we went into this with eyes wide open (our knuckles white too) after climbing the mountain that was our former property, Little Oak and with full hearts for all her history and presence. The gardens of her hey day lost over time, we are reinventing and reimagining in the hope Hannah and Emily, the two Fletcher mother’s who raised their families here and called Moorfield home from the 1800’s to the 1980’s and built the gardens it was well known for, and hosted many a party we hear, would be happy to roam them. And sometimes I feel like they do, alongside me on my early morning walks and in the dropping light of dusk. We commune in the peacefulness and in our love of gardens, the two of them and I, the third mum to ever call Moorfield home and only the second family to raise children here in almost two centuries.
Today, incidentally, is my mum, Pam’s birthday and I think both Hannah and Emily would very much approve of our multi-generational living with dinners between mum’s cottage and our home in the original homestead becoming a regular occurrence. Last night we served up homemade pasta “pillows” as Nessie calls them, filled with a zesty ricotta mix and topped with a fresh tomato sauce, freshly baked sea salt and rosemary foccacia (both of these recipes from
‘In good Company’ and ‘Around the Table’) and an Apricot and Mixed Berry Galette with sour cream pastry (from A Year of Simple Family Food by Julia Busuttil Nishimura aka Julia Ostro).Up and down we go, daily through the young forest of Malus floribunda that will one day shower us in petals in spring and the beautiful blaze of autumnal colours, shade in summer and structure on a glistening white wintry landscape. Nes excitedly makes the short trip between the two houses for her baking sessions with Nana and sneaky cartoons and honey biscuits, for us we love being invited around to sample the wares with a cuppa or enjoying drinks and nibbles on the verandah.
The verandah of mum’s cottage is a favourite place to spend time for all of us, as it has the best views on the property of the surrounding rolling pastural landscape often dotted with mobs of Eastern Grey Roos and the winding creek that has never run dry, which kept it’s banks through the Gold Rush, unlike many in this area carved out in the feverish search for that touch of yellow. It is lined with the ever majestic and ghostly River Red Gums on those misty mornings and cut through by the family of native ducks that paddle along it and the nearby dam. It is a magical view to live with.
There is always such an anticipation with a new year, especially when building something like the Garden at Moorfield and wondering what will have changed, and morphed and be unrecognisable a year from now. There is always so much stake in the transformation, the stuff of jaw dropping Before and After’s which we are ano stranger too, surprising even ourselves sometimes just how much a space can be turned into something entitrely new but as much as I love these great gestures of productiveness and a vision realised, it is what it takes to get there that I am, we are focused on this year. The journey if you will allow me the cliche.
There are special little corners here, small tasks and perfecting that which has been laid out in broad strokes just to get ahead and make those big inroads of a project that is quite simply, huge in order to feel like you’ll ever get to where you see it headed but the joy in being here and in working closely with the details, is where my heart has come to pause.
There will be big change and lots of growth, no doubt, we have set the wheels in motion for this to always be the case for the foreseeable future and we work endlessly to see it flourish but growing food and flowers, picking them and preserving them and arranging them, making inviting spaces in which to sit and sip tea, or wine, eat scones or good cheese, alone, with mum, with Nes, with Hugo, with friends.
Fiddling away with tricky seeds of sought after blooms in my new glasshouse, and pampering veggies I’ve not grown before or in years, since leaving Little Oak and starting again. In studying insects and birdlife that are here, that will come as the garden grows and offers more food and shelter. In fastidiousness of planting palettes and textural composition, in soil health and the shaping of trees. For me, this year, for all of us really, the big changes will delight as they always do, excite and motivate us forward but the small things will linger more I might imagine, after two years of great leaps ahead, one begins to crave a sort of simplicity and seeking the beauty of that which requires a slowing down when moments allow to just enjoy what is beginning to transpire here, a magic manifesting from all the stress and hardwork and relentlessness of the last 24 months, that was indeed the goal all along.
The views that greet me from within the homestead, looking out the windows on our vision for Moorfield, that much more how I imagined she might oneday be. My attention trained on the way I want this place to feel to live in, how I want it to make others feel who visit here and that only comes when how I feel aligns with what I am creating and what I am feeling flickers of as 2024 begins, is a contentedness, a playfulness and the feeling I am falling hopelessly in love with the garden she is becoming. Happy New Year everybody and may 2024 be the year you fall in love for the first time with your garden or all over again.
Pip xo
NOTE: If you want to see the journey put into a more digestible format, the last Moor(Field) Guide No. 6 was a retrospective on the year that was 2023 and gives you a look at the spaces from the planning, to the building, to pics of where it is currently at.
Keep reading below….
PIP’S PLANT PICK
Echinacea ‘Primadonna Pink’
Echinacea has long been a dream for me to grow, for some reason or another, in Tassie she failed to grow for me at Little Oak but here, in the deep free draining chocolate top soil of our Long Border, she thrives! I will admit I did a little giddy dance when I saw her, Echinacea ‘Primadonna Pink’ which I picked up from Antique Perennials onsite nursery but would also be available through their many stockists, reappearing from the earth in her second spring last year. She came through a much larger clump than the year before, a sure sign she is happy, her leaves a healthy darker green and a good size and the prolific buds that formed to explode into these great clouds of pink. The other clumps of her, not so happy last year, were standing tall and vigorous in no time and at last, I am finally a grower of Echinacea.
I’ll admit I am also having a bit of a love affair with Echinacea ‘Pallida’ and coveting it everytime I see it other people’s gardens so I can see it in my future garden spaces. Watch this space.
GROWING DETAILS:
CULTIVATED SOIL 💩 NEEDS FREE DRAINING SOIL 💦 WILL FORM A CLUMP 📏 FLOWERS IN SUMMER TO AUTUMN 🌸 PROPAGATE THROUGH DIVISION EVERY FEW YEARS ONCE ESTABLISHED ✂️ OR GROW FROM SEED 🌱 LOW MAINTENANCE ONCE ESTABLISHED 😌 WILL NEED SUMMER IRRIGATION 🥵 BENEFICIAL INSECT ATTRACTING 🐝 PERFECT FOR FLOWER ARRANGING 💐 CUT BACK AFTER FLOWERING IN AUTUMN OR LEAVE OVER WINTER AND CUT BACK IN EARLY SPRING 🪚\ USED AS A HERBAL REMEDY 🥣
Coming up in January…
The Garden Gadabout Interview and Gallery of the much loved, “Melrose Cottage” for Paid Subscribers - within the week ahead.
The first of 2024’s Moor(Field) Guides for Paid Subscribers.
Various Garden Gadabout Galleries avaiable to all subscribers.
Cheat Sheets - Corn and Berries.
And the first installment of our Design Guide for Paid Subscribers. Where we break down Little Oak and Moorfield as we designed them and take a close look at the decisions we made and why and what we learnt from Little Oak that we are implementing at Moorfield for those of you interested in the nitty gritty and eager to avoid making too many mistakes as you create your own garden, which are often costly, as we so often did at Little Oak in the early years before I got my horticulture qualifications and married them with my BA of Design. This will be a really helpful reference point for those of you who have bitten off a big chunk (like we always do) and those just getting in there and giving things a crack!
Thank you as always, everybody, for coming along with us on this next chapter of our journey in garden making, we are forever grateful that you take the time out of your busy lives to do so.
Pip, Hugo, Nes, Pam and Wednesday (Hannah and Emily) xo
Lovely read as always , thank you! I am after white Echinacea at the moment but was thrilled to see you spotlighting it - great timing, and so useful! Btw, my daughter got A mighty oak, by Julia Donaldson for Xmas from an elderly neighbor and it is absolutely gorgeous, made me think of Nes - highly recommend! All the best to you all for 2024. Here’s hoping for an open garden soon, please!! 😁❤️🌱
What a busy year you had. I love your cheat sheets. They are so comprehensive and easy to follow. Now I understand why I can’t grow echinacea at Little Oak! They are so prolific in my mum’s garden in Poland so I assumed I could easily grow them too but failed twice so far! They say three times lucky so I’ll give it one more go 😀.