Where was I?

Where was I?

As much as I’d love to be a full-time gardener, spending every moment toiling in the soil, life has a habit of drawing your attention away from what you love.  Sometimes it is to do things you would rather not, and other times life hands you opportunities too good to refuse!  Last week was one of the good ‘not to be missed’ opportunities.

Through my love of all things garden, I have found myself in the company of some pretty incredible people as a Botanical tour guide to for the fabulous Australian travel company Botanica World Discoveries.  Usually I am the kiwi on the spot, taking our mostly international guests on a wonderful adventure across New Zealand, visiting some of the very best gardens we have to offer.  It is a privilege and an honour to host visitors to my home country and I take great pride showing everyone around.  Next month I’m off to host guests on Norfolk Island and am super excited to return to such a beautiful island in the Pacific.

Each year Botanica bring all of the Botanical Guides together somewhere exciting in the vicinity of Melbourne, Australia where we not only spend a day doing conferency things and compare notes and experiences from our travels but we get to visit amazing gardens and places.  And that is what I got up to last week.  After our soggy lack lustre summer it was such a joy to feel the warmth and sun on my face.  The blue skies seemed to go on forever, although I did feel a little awkward complaining about our rain, when they were in desperate need of some, and as usual I tread carefully lest I stubble upon a snake, spider or creature that could kill or maim me!  I honest don’t know how they garden there without fear.

Now I’m back, I need to turn my attentions back to the garden.

And after the rubbish summer, there was the temptation is to do nothing… At the worst of the soggy windy period, the suggestion did actually leave my lips to just stop and take up something less weather dependent like pottery. I was swiftly reminded I wouldn’t like that at all and by doing nothing would result in an impenetrable weedy mess and we’d have to buy our vegetables from the supermarket. Those two thoughts alone were enough to pull me out of the murky feelings of a gardener’s despair.

So, the outcome is, I’m not giving up. But if I’m completely honest, it was as close as it ever was to entertaining such thoughts. I’ve been at this a really long time and in the early days the wonder and excitement of witnessing something new reveal itself to you is like a shot of adrenaline spurring you on. After a while, when you’ve mastered the ‘how’ techniques and tried all the strange and unique crops and decided to keep growing them or determine they were a waste of time and you’d never eat them, that the new experiences are more often than not the unexpected ways things could go wrong. And when you compound that with a soggy summer without those endless days of sunshine releasing that feel good serotonin, and promoting a sense of wellbeing and positivity, the gloom from the weather can be overwhelming and all encompassing.

But I shall rise up – there is no alternative option for me – I am a gardener through and through and I’d be lost without it. With less than a week remaining of summer I have decided to look forward to autumn with the same excitement I give spring. It is a new season and a new start.

Ordinarily I look for ways to cling to summer for as long as I possibly could and am prepared to mix my meteorological from my astronomical and start the season with the calendar and end it with the equinox for an extra three weeks. But not this time. Autumn is actually my favourite season where off days are expected, mixed in with the lingering warmth as we descend into winter. Bowls of comforting soup become acceptable along with the cosy comfort from a fluffy jumper and good socks, and sleep is easier to achieve without the sticky heat.

Ok – now we are back on track with motivation and gusto, the question remains – what will I be doing with the garden in 2026?

In the Palace Garden:

Firstly, on a large scale is ‘do nothing.’  Which doesn’t quite mean what it says. I have, in my head, grand ideas for the next room and it will be wonderful. But at this moment in time, I need a year off from garden design and garden building. The last room was finished last year, and I need a season to get to know it and learn its likes and dislikes and how to maintain it. So, it will be a watch and learn stage for that garden. It is important not to bite off more than I can chew.

For the rest of The Palace, Room Two, my native garden has been in long enough to do its ‘sleep, creep and leap’ pattern that a new garden falls into. However, the leap stage fell short. It is so harsh here that the conditions have taken its toll on my vision so some extensive editing, redesigning and replanting is on the cards for this autumn. In these conditions the best gardening philosophies to work with are ‘do or die’ and ‘don’t plant the same plant in same hole twice.’ Change is afoot and I’m excited for it.

Room one is pretty steady, but the external wind break needs an upgrade – which should be done in an afternoon of my choosing – before the weather gets any worse. And the hedge needs trimming again.

The Edible Garden

Here we will be a bit ruthless – as plants start to show signs of fatigue, they’ll need to come out, there is nothing worse for morale than starring out at the dead and dying in a sea of crispy brown leaves.

Tedious weed watch becomes more important as the weather changes. Seedlings no longer burnt to a crisp by the midday sun become emboldened and an army of tiny green seedlings pop up instantaneously – it almost seems like they pop back immediately after the pass of the hoe. Little and often becomes little and frequent.

Speaking of seedlings, the seeds of a new season will be started, not nearly as exciting as the summer range, but a lot less troublesome and a welcome harvest in the middle of winter. The fallow beds will be sown immediately with a green manure to replace the goodness taken by the harvested crops. As easy as it will be to do what I’ve always done, alongside the life changes of empty nesting and those pesky problems mentioned earlier, I’ve decided to give the garden a bit of a rejig next spring so a few winter days with graph paper and scratching my head should reveal a new plan to make life easier.

Aside from that there is the maintenance. There are two kinds of maintenance to be considered – the do regularly to keep things in control and the big projects that will make things easier to keep in control in the future. Last year I gave the greenhouse some long overdue love and aside from keeping it clean and tidy there is nothing to worry about for some time to come. We also made maintenance repairs on the office and the shed – although a storm blown out window on the shed still needs attention.

Basically, what I’ll being doing this cool season is looking at the jobs that usually take a lot of time to sort out, and then I find myself doing them all over again with the same level of difficulty. Like a weedy corner that never seems to be tamed. I need to look at why and fix that and hopefully that will be the end of it, rather than just addressing what I see.

So ultimately there is a vague plan of carry on, do nothing, and take a few deep dives. Not wanting to overwhelm myself with the magnitude of what I actually want to achieve this year, I’ll take it one step at a time – just like eating an elephant… one spoonful at a time.

Come again soon – to see the journey unfold.

Sarah the Gardener : o)