A peaceful nook

Jane and Peter Westren (pictured below right) had fallen in love with Tasmania on family holidays, and finally made the decision to move south from their home in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales after their daughter relocated to Tassie. Both are retired teachers with a love of travelling and gardening. They found the 9ha property online, visited it and put in an offer. “We really couldn’t believe what we’d done,” says Jane, “but we are so glad we took the plunge.”

The garden is nestled amid gently rolling hills in the rural area of Nook, near Sheffield. It’s set down a long, tree-lined drive that meanders over a small bridge and skirts the large dam where platypus can be spotted.

Six of the garden’s nine hectares are taken up by sheep paddocks and the house and garden. About three hectares are untouched bushland, with gum trees and glades of man ferns (Dicksonia antarctica), known outside Tasmania as soft tree ferns. “We feel we don’t really own the bush,” says Jane. “We are its custodians.” They’ve made a few tracks up through the trees, which lead to a walking track along the top of the Badgers, a nearby range of hills.

Netted returns

To get started, Jane and Peter laid out a ‘home yard’, which was fenced to keep in Molly, their Cavoodle puppy. This was supposed to be the extent of the garden, as part of the reason for their move had been to downsize. However, the idea that the garden would be just around the house soon evaporated, as the couple set out an orchard and vegie area beyond the home yard, renovated an old barn and built a chook shed.

Peter has well-honed building skills and had learnt from past experience how vital it is to protect productive garden spaces from predators. There’s a large netted area for fruit trees and flowers, and smaller areas for berries and vegetables, which are grown in raised beds.

Penstemons fill many spaces in the garden – Jane adores them for their toughness and beauty. She estimates she has about 30 varieties, many grown from cuttings taken from her neighbour’s garden. So far, they appear to have been ignored by the possums, and add colour for much of the year.

Bed of roses

“I had never had much success with roses in previous gardens, although I’ve always loved their scented flowers,” admits Jane, saying they were usually afflicted by black spot and other problems. But she felt that the good soil, regular rainfall and generally low humidity of Tasmania would produce strong, vigorous and healthy roses, with flowers over many months.

As roses are a favourite with possums, Jane grows most of hers in one of the large enclosed spaces, surrounded by beds of self-seeding annuals, including cosmos, scabiosa and snapdragon. Like the penstemons, many of the roses have been grown from cuttings taken from her neighbour’s garden. Other beloved plants are salvia and dahlia, which flower over many months and add vibrant colour to the garden, planted with airy gaura and Japanese windflower, which bloom from late summer well into autumn – all overlooked by the possums. New to Peter and Jane, but now a firm favourite, is a Tassie native that thrives in their garden, and which is also untouched by possums. The native pepperberry (Tasmannia lanceolata) is grown as a productive hedge, its berries harvested in autumn, then dried and used in the same way as peppercorns.

Nature and nurturing

While the deep, rich volcanic soil in this part of Tasmania is definitely an asset for gardeners, Jane also works hard to keep her garden well nourished and cared for. She uses manure from her alpacas, Horatio and Marius, along with worm wee, other manures and compost to feed the garden. “The alpaca poo is easy to collect and spread, as they poo in a designated part of their paddock, and produce small, round pellets that are ready to apply to the garden,” says Jane.

Helping to reduce maintenance are mulches of gravel from a local quarry, and local woodchip. The gravel, ordered by the truckload, is used to surface paths and reduce the areas of lawn (and its associated maintenance). It also ties the design of the garden together.

Jane and Peter keep a photographic record of their garden by creating a new album of images each year, which Jane says is a wonderful way to record the garden’s development. Here’s to the next chapter in their Nook book…