Heavenly Beverley : Gardening - Guerilla Style...

Today is 6 May, at the beginning of the last month of autumn. Our potted paradise is currently being battered by the first significant cold front this year. This is cold (for us); the thermometer is hovering around 13 degrees Celsius, with scurrying clouds dropping short and sharp showers. Three days ago, we were sitting outside enjoying the gentleness of a balmy evening. I am seriously amused as May is supposed to be the least windy month of the year here and we are being buffeted with gusts of up to forty-five kilometres an hour. But the rain is most welcome, putting hand watering on hold for a few days.

Beverley is a gardening nightmare at times. Clay abounds in great dollops of water repellent goo. Plants either drown in winter or fry in summer, with extremes ranging from -2 to 46. We can be belted by strong winds year-round - the screaming hot and dry north easterlies that suck every bit of moisture out of the leaves to the bitterly cold squalls that have their origins in the vast expanse of the Southern Ocean. Added to all this is an average of 400 millilitres a year of rain if we're lucky, mostly falling in the cooler months.

Yet, our frangipani is still flowering and hasn't dropped its leaves. As ever in windy weather, our top-heavy ficus is lying sidewards at a jaunty angle. There is no point in straightening it until the wind dies down.

We arrived in Beverley at the end of the driest year on record. Our "garden" at the House that Rocks was a barren wasteland. We spent countless hours planting trees to create a micro-climate that hopefully would shelter the shrubs around them. Even with a benign first winter, we wept over corpses. Plants that are drought tolerant and frost tolerant are few and far between. Then we shook our heads in disbelief as one of our most successful screening plants was supposed to be a coastal grevillea...

We had restored enough of the garden to be married there during our second summer. That next winter was brutal - nineteen frosts in a row caused the demise of Michael's twenty-year-old ficus trees. Those shrubs that did survive were mowed down to ground level by the extreme cold.

The third summer, we had to protect the southeastern corner from heat. With shade cloth, we could just keep the water up to that area if we hand-hosed twice a day. Otherwise, we would have lost in excess of twenty baby swamp sheoaks that we had carefully transplanted in spring.

We lived at Brooking Street adjacent to Lorna's Freedom Hollow for six years. We continued to be astonished at our garden's survival - or otherwise. Plants that appeared to be at death's door would suddenly perk up and some we were sure of their continued good health would cark it overnight.

In our last year, we almost fully reticulated the garden. At least we could set the sprinklers to activate before dawn and give the plants an advantage on some of those scorchers that threatened to annihilate all and sundry in a single day. But with the East End Gallery beginning to take over our lives, we reluctantly made the decision to sell the House that Rocks and the fabulous garden we'd created.

Am I comfortable with that decision? You betcha. Do I miss the big garden with its countless little hidey holes? Sometimes. I choose now not to drive past as the garden no longer is as we remembered.

However, we are delighted with our potted paradise. The tall and thick walls shelter our garden and provide a warm surrounding blanket in winter and plentiful shade in summer. Watering takes an hour instead of three. We can go away, knowing the work of caring for it is manageable. And hopefully, after the intrastate regions open again, the Beverley Hillbillies will do just that and take the opportunity to head northwards.

Stay safe.