To Sue and Jim Smith, caring for their 2ha garden is a lifestyle.
The couple moved to the Littlehampton property in 2013 with plans to use their retirement to transform the paddocks around the house into an English-style garden.
Their vision was for a space with year-round color that they could open to the public.
“We only open it every two years so people can see the change … but I also wanted to be able to show people that there are sections of the garden that you could take home as ideas,” Sue says.
“Because obviously no one is going to have a garden this size, but some of the ideas, like the water features and stuff like that you could incorporate into your garden.”
Jim spends most of every day in the garden, following a schedule of watering, mowing, maintenance and planting and keeping track of his progress in a “cupboard full” of notebooks.
Over the past 10 years, the property has evolved to include more than 1000 roses, a walled garden for cut flowers, winding paths between sprawling cottage flowers, a rill, Monet bridge over a lake, a fire pit and bulb meadow.
“It’s our life, it’s all we do, apart from the garden club,” Sue says.
“When we go away, we go to gardens,” Jim adds.
“If it’s raining, we go to a shop and buy gardening books.
“I can remember being out early on … and there was an article on (the radio) where this bloke was saying people pay money to go on a tour to look at gardens.
“I said ‘that’s bloody stupid, why would you want to do that’.
“That’s what we do now.”
Gardening has become their all-consuming passion, but what started as a retirement project now also has a much deeper meaning.
“Now apart from the garden, my other thing is to raise money for motor neuron (disease), because my best friend died of it and she’s responsible for a lot of the features in this garden,” Sue says.
“She really got us and our passion for the garden, she was always interested, always had an opinion and I think loved the space almost as much as us.
“… She just lived down the road and I’d give her a ring and say ‘Jeanette do you want to come round, I’ve got this idea, see what you think about it’.”
The Smiths have opened their garden to the public four times through the Open Gardens Scheme, using the last two to raise money for motor neurone disease.
Last year they raised more than $10,000.
Sue and Jeanette met volunteering at Mt Barker’s Duck Flat Community Garden and, as we walk through the Smith’s sprawling yard, she points out Jeanette’s Memorial Garden – a small area near the couple’s house, full of David Austin roses.
There’s also the sweeping bulb meadow, which Jeanette helped design, and the rill – a water channel popular in Spanish gardens – that she insisted they had to have.
“(Jeanette) is simply irreplaceable and there will never be anyone like her again,” Sue says.
“This is why I honour her memory and she lives on through our garden.
“… She’s the silent third person in this garden.”
