January, and 2023 for that matter, began in the tropical humidity of my youth surrounded by stands of Lipstick Palms and Paperbarks, and mass plantings of Ixora and Bromeliads, we’d barely set down our suitcases or relished in a moment of feeling relaxed after our equatorial escape, before it was all systems go and all that had been held up by the torrential winter and equally wet spring, suddenly sprang into action.
Amongst the chaos, I could barely contain my excitement to explore the growth in our newly planted garden, most of it in the ground only moments before we went away and sustained by our fury of mulching and feeding before we left, and our new irrigation system. The young orchard had puffed right up with iridescent green and glowing auburn leaves of new growth filling out the crowns on almost all of them. The couple we had known were in trouble before we left, in the ground too late and drowned in our waterlogged soil, had given up entirely in our absence, no surprise. I will begin ordering their replacements this next month, as orders open for the new bareroot season. For roses too, to fill wonderful gaps! It’s always a delight to find there is room for more!
We spend the month tweaking and moving irrigation, changing and setting timers and sitting about with a cold drink at the end of a hot day marvelling at the feeling of not having to run around like maniac’s hand watering in the dropping light, something we did for almost a decade. We ask ourselves how we ever did it for so long?! There is always some reason at the time……but as we hear the rotators turn on and settle into our seats, we can’t remember what on earth they could’ve been?!
As the garden matures in the coming years and the green walls of hedging that much of the garden sits within also grow up and shield the beds and plantings from the baking summer sun, and ripping winds, these garden rooms will become their own little microclimates. Trees too, so many trees, ornamental and productive, in the ground already and soon to be, will help to create more microclimates around the 5 acres of garden we are creating. Within these areas, utility spaces, for the two dwellings of course, but also for the garden. Small timber sheds dotted around for storage of tools and propagation paraphernalia and a large area that will be the engine room of the garden, where we make compost. Soil and ‘soil health’ is, after all, alongside water, the single most valuable thing in any garden and it is safe to say that these days, I am as obsessed with the dirt itself, as I am with what we stick into it.
The rest of the month is as busy as that first week back. Trades scamper and roll large machines every which way. Mum’s much anticipated house build has begun, at last! Trenches are dug for plumbing and power and pipes and cables laid. The foundations go in faster than any of us had expected and I am left scratching my head as to the space around it and how I might design the slithers of land between mum’s house and the terraces, home to the rose garden, veggie patch and at the lowest point in the land, the orchard. I sketch furiously for the first few days, trying to settle my racing head with ideas put down on paper and it becomes clearer, little by little. It is a garden, within a garden, that I am designing now that must marry well, where they meet.
We’re relieved to see new growth on the Malus plena in the Long Border, released from their tiny root bound pots and flourishing, and new shoots on all the perennial plantings too. By months end, pink Echinacea ‘Primadonna’, Verbena hastata ‘Blue Spires’ and the Rudbekia Maxima, as well as a number of Salvias, have all begun to bloom, the ornamental grasses have sent out new shoots, the laurel hedge too, the asters are in bud and masses of peas have shot up from the peastraw. We pull them and lay them back down. With the peas gone we can start to see a hint of the palette that is to come, and I’m thrilled with it.
The pool goes in with relative ease and we’re very happy with its placement and its outlook, its exactly what we’d hoped, the much laboured over colour too, is perfect, pale and unobtrusive against the subtle hues of the scalded summer landscape beyond. Now the real hard work begins at our end. The huge amount of terracing, the Wattle and Wire fence and come autumn, when its cooled, the plantings. Olives busting out of their pots to get into the ground in this area and become gorgeous silver evergreen cover, stare at me longingly from the nursery we’ve created under the giant Crow Ash closest to the house. A favourite spot for insects on a hot day too.
The last days of the month are cooler and overcast and Remi shows up to tame the hedges around the homestead and the row of Manchurian pears along the fence that we are slowly pleaching, they’re starting to look far more refined. He begins to lay the drip irrigation always intended for the rose garden with rotary sprinklers a stop gap while we were away.
We take the opportunity milder summer weather allows, to work long days weeding and feeding all the trees and garden areas. A liquid gypsum treatment for the rose garden in preparation for the coming sodden seasons, in case it’s as bad as the last and the water struggles to drain away, and in the orchard too, for the holes where we lost a nectarine and peach for the same reason. The herb garden having been at full tilt all month, begins to wane and vibrant flowers in yellows, oranges, blues and whites all begin to harden into seed head and turn variants of the same brown. I cut and collect them. I have a second herb garden to create at mum’s house.
I move into the office, and Hugo moves into his shed. He is really beginning to relish having a space of his own where he can work in relative peace and keep his guitars for jam sessions with his best mate, long into the evening. My space, the top room of the 1862 building that adjoins the homestead of the same era by way of the weatherboard extension, is much smaller but I like that, it cocoons me. I surround myself with all that inspires; beautiful garden books, and stationary with botanical themes, a vase of flowers from the garden, a young monstera, a beautiful handmade candle, artwork by my father, friends and found throughout my life and travels, some gifts. Classical music plays softly.
I sit down at the small French desk and begin the first of The Garden at Moorfield Journal entries online. I’m so nervous to put it out there, only comforted by the knowledge that I’ve been being asked to do this by so many of you for so long, where I can write about being here and what we do in the garden and how we do it, without having to fight word count for accuracy of explanations and where I can provide diagrams where words don’t suffice. I soon realise I worried for nothing, and January sees us become a Substack bestseller within 5 days of publishing the first entry. I am completely overwhelmed but also bolstered, it feels so good to write and to draw and to share in a way I’ve never been able to before. It feels more natural to me, and possibly, more useful for others.
The office becomes my little haven of horticultural delights, and it is where I pen this, the first of the Free Monthly Newsletters, The Month at Moorfield and many more to come I hope, alongside their far meatier cousins, the weekly Garden Journal Entries and soon, The Garden Gadabout, a side piece on other people’s gardens that we visit and inspire us, in ours.
The year feels like it is off to a racing start and we suspect it won’t slow down any time soon, but we’re ready. So many exciting projects afoot and just enough growth in the garden areas to spur us into February, the hottest month we are told, to get the hard landscaping done around the pool while we’ve the least chance of rain to slow us down and don’t have to spend time mollycoddling new plantings in other areas, thanks to irrigation and good soil work back in November/December.
As we tear January off the calendar it feels like a blur, a wonderful blur of change and transformation. I suspect February will only hold more. Until then…..
READING: WITH NATURE by Fiona Brockhoff and WILD - The Naturalistic Garden by Noel Kingsbury and Claire Takacs
WATCHING: 2022/2023 Winter Special on Gardener’s World and Monty Don’s Adriatic Gardens on ABC
LISTENING TO: Jonsi, Thomas Newman scores and a USA Roadtrip Album we created on Spotify but never got to use (Covid of course).
FOLLOWING: Just found the gorgeous @hopewood_home on Instagram and The Gardening Mind on Substack
MAKING: Too many decisions; and Mulberry Jam from the old, crooked mulberry tree near the house.
PLANTING: More perennial grasses in the Long Border while the weather is mild and the deepest dark David Austin’s, ‘Munstead Wood’ and ‘Fisherman’s Friend’.
BUYING: The new David Austin bareroot roses. ‘Emily Bronte’ x 2 (I’ve been waiting for the Australian release of this one for a while), ‘The Mill on the Floss’ and ‘Tottering-By-Gently’. Also, an old school classic and favourite of my family, ‘Just Joey’.
So enjoyable…thank you..🦊
What a wonderful read!
I applaud your energy in creating a massive garden from scratch. And I share the joy of watching new plants survive and prosper.
There's something profoundly hopeful about gardening. One plants in good faith and then hopes from one day to the next. When a year has passed, and the plan can be seen coming to fruition, it's underlining the word 'hope' with good mulch, blood and bone and water!
PS: How I envy you your garden room! A floral and horticultural haven - lucky you!