garden memories

'Photography is inescapably a memorial art. It selects, out of the flow of time, a moment to be preserved, with the moments before and after falling away like sheer cliffs.' (Teju Cole)

At times it's interesting to reflect on how we got to where we are now. Looking backwards there were times of garden angst and times of garden glory.

Like the time Stephen Ryan, host of the ABC TV program Gardening Australia for a couple of years, came round with two photographers to film the garden and interview me.

Then there was the time when the garden was opened to the public for a spring weekend in 2011 as part of the program of the Australian Open Garden Scheme.

My dog Potter is old and grey now, almost 17, so I love this photo of her as a sprite young pup posing among the forget me nots.

It's easy to work out when this shot was taken.  We moved in in 1979 and this is what the garden looked like a year or two later.  The child in the picture was 3 or 4 at the time. Now she's 40.

We had a wonderful cubby house, but it started to fall down and became dangerous so we got rid of it. I used to grow kiwifruit on the screen in the photo above, but that plant needed more water than I was prepared to give, so eventually we parted ways -  another way of saying it went to compost heaven. 

Then the garden needed more structure, so I pulled nearly everything out, put in the paths and started again.

It took ages to fill the gap alongside the fence where the cubby had been. As the Acacia grew it became all trunk and started pushing the fence over.

The Acacia went. The Pittosporum are still too small to provide a decent screen. I don't mind. You can buy instant gratification for the garden by buying expensive, large trees and shrubs. But I've never done that. I like watching them grow.

The passion for garden making took over gradually, but I remember stumbling, not sure what I was doing or what the result would look like. Now the passion's still there, but I'm much more sure of myself, and it's more garden maintaining than creating. I'm more aware now of the wildlife that I share the garden with, and often stop and watch teeny tiny spiders or insects in fascinated wonder. An important task is to keep the bird baths scrubbed clean and filled with clean water.