The quest for beauty

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When we first arrived here 11 years ago, I thought that gardening in a tough climate would mean that our quest for beauty would be elusive.

It’s not that I didn’t think it was beautiful to begin with – this place was beguiling, and Grant and I knew that from our very first encounter. 

But in creating a “conventionally beautiful” garden, I knew we would have a big challenge on our hands, especially considering our previous gardening endeavours were in the gentle and somewhat artificial environs of the city. 

Through losses and failures aplenty, of the wrong plants planted with all the best intentions, which either keeled over in the heat or survived only to succumb to the frosts that first winter, I learned a few valuable lessons: 

1. Keep on going regardless. 
2. Learn from our mistakes. 
3. Accept the adversities along the way – and above all, 
4. Be more elastic in our preconceptions of what a beautiful garden is. 

The idea of beauty is a hugely subjective one. It’s a concept as personal and as unique as we are. But in gardening, it’s the common quest that unites us all. We are all striving, it seems, for a sense of beauty, whether it be growing our own food, collecting geraniums, or even tending terrariums. 

Finding beauty through our own endeavours is as natural as finding good company, and as instinctive as seeking love. But, above all, I’ve learned it’s also about being flexible. It’s about finding a kind of beauty that works, and also understanding that it can be fleeting. 

Our closest town is Newstead, population 820. It’s an historic town, small and pretty. Its main street is flanked by an avenue of old elms, behind which sits an itsy-bitsy collection of houses and businesses.

It has an immaculate, award-winning butchery with an interior seemingly unchanged since 1925. There’s a pub, an independent supermarket, a combined post office-chemist (with a drop-down counter for dispensing scripts and issuing stamps), a swimming pool, one cafe, and surely the world’s smallest croquet club. 

The Men’s Shed next to the old knitting mill has a blue wooden aeroplane on its roof, painted with the words “receding airlines”. Beside that, a levee encircles the town protecting it from the unpredictable waters of the Loddon. 

There are some great gardens, too.

Our good friend Lesley, who lives on the edge of town in a classic Victorian house, has created supreme beauty in her garden by recreating a slice of 19^th century England. I have never seen another garden out our way where the most delicate and cherished cottage garden plants thrive. Lesley’s garden is almost collapsing under the roses, the exuberant lupins, the great towers of delphiniums and hollyhocks. Beneath it all, a menagerie of chickens runs riot. She has triumphantly created the kind of garden we never could, and it’s magnificent. 

Just down the road, Chris was on the brink of throwing in the towel after only a couple of plant failures. But he has found his own version of beauty by discovering natives. In a flush of courage, and with a garden plan including new paths of crushed recycled bricks, he has found fresh determination in a garden now teeming with native birds and wildlife. 

And there’s a house we pass that has a kind of Flintstones garden in-the-making, of great round river rocks arranged curiously into piles around newly planted clumps of Washingtonia robusta (fan palm) – a kind of beauty unlike anything else in Newstead. 

Meanwhile, on the outskirts of town, where the Loddon winds its sinuous path among the poplars, a couple in a new-build, adrift in a paddock, have planted their first tree. From the road I can see it’s a sapling Persian silk tree. I can also see the beginnings of a path that has been scratched out of the parched ground. 

And so, true to this unspoken instinctive code and perhaps without realising, their own particular quest for beauty begins. 

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Jeremy's May garden notes

• As I'm writing this, we're experiencing an autumn heatwave with low thirties for the next week. It looks like autumn but feels like summer again. Rain is much needed as we've only had 80 mm in six months. This means we need another 540 mm in the next six months to reach our annual average, which, as you can see, is going to be quite unlikely.
• Can there ever be any plant more humble, more reliable and more ordinary than the geranium? Perhaps not. I am ever-fascinated by plants loaded with emotive connotations, and geraniums are a fine example. They are the daggy leftover cheer of scrappy pots at the side of grandma's house, or the quintessential village scene in Greece, of terracotta, lazy cats and the azure blue of the sea. It's all there in "geranium world" as quietly iconic as can be, and they've become my latest obsession.

• The grasses are on the turn. Autumn colour isn't just for the trees. The large clumps of Miscanthus sinensis and its more erect form 'Yaku Jima' (which is my absolute favourite), are blushing to shades of gold, apricot and tangerine, and it seems to be happening quickly despite the continued balmy conditions. The 'Yaku Jima' is the most intense in colour, and its effect in the garden is like brush strokes in some lost De Kooning painting.
• In the little woodland, the peppercorn trees (Schinus molle) are having a second flush of flowers. We have a combination now of blossoms and berries all in the one place, and it's attracting thousands of bees and dozens of scarlet rosellas who are stealthily nibbling at the bunches and sending them falling to the ground.
• Alongside the vegetable garden, there's a rustic arbour Grant made out of old fence posts and willow canes from down the creek. Over it clambers the now crimson leaves of an ornamental grape. What I hadn't noticed is that over summer it had escaped stealthily into the canopy of a nearby golden ash. Now that the ash is ablaze in a cloak of amber, the crimson of the grape suddenly reveals itself in a drama of long luminous tendrils.

• We have just had our open garden with Open Gardens Victoria. It has been an epic weekend for Grant and me, and we are blown away by the turnout. It has been hugely rewarding, heartwarming and an altogether incredible experience – and we have met so many wonderful people from near and far. Stay tuned for the next newsletter for more on the event.
• Speaking of our open garden, The Friends of Wombat Hill Botanical Gardens had a pop-up nursery at the event, and it was a roaring success. This is our all-time favourite nursery, and so many of their plants are featured here at The Stones. The nursery is run by volunteers, who pot up, propagate and grow plants donated by local gardeners, as well as from the gardens of the volunteers themselves. Many of the plants are old-world, hard to find and have an excellent strike rate. The profits go towards the upkeep of the Wombat Hill Botanic Gardens, which is a historic and truly magical garden on top of Wombat Hill, in the beautiful spa town of Daylesford.

Catch up on Jeremy's previous stories here or find him on Instagram at @thestonescentralvictoria

Thank you to SÜK Workwear for sponsoring today's In The Weeds.