Adventure seeker

“I love creating gardens, and have shaped three of them over the years. First, The Chapel at Ashton, then Hamlyn Cottage in Mount Barker, both in the Adelaide Hills. I shared many stories about the Hamlyn Cottage garden with Gardening Australia viewers and readers and it became known as Sophie’s Patch. But people wondered why I left that glorious garden in 2022: they didn’t realise that the property was soon to be surrounded by a cheek-by-jowl housing development, just 6m from the end wall of our beautiful heritage-listed stone home. Other people assumed the property had got too big for me. I may have grey hair, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have one more big, audacious garden project in me!
“Which brings me to Sophie’s Patch 2.0, known as Shingleback Farm. It’s in the harsh Mid Murray region of South Australia, an area classified as arid or semi-arid, depending on the year. Australia is the driest inhabited continent in the world and 70 per cent of it is either arid or semi-arid, with unreliable and erratic rainfall of less. Last year, when I bought the property, was the driest on record for the area.”

Sophie shares with us the joys, challenges and wonders of transforming this arid-climate site into the glorious oasis it is today. She touches on planning and planting to create a kinder microclimate, growing vegies in wicking beds, rewilding the rest of the 7.3ha property, and much more.
You can read the full, fascinating story in Sophie’s own words – in our our June issue, and see more of her gardening adventures on Friday nights on ABC TV and on iview.
Photo: Jacqui Way