People, fires and gardens

Fascinating visit to two gardens open through Open Gardens Australia (www.opengarden.org.au) in the central highlands of Victoria yesterday - two days after the threat of a bushfire spreading across from the west through these very communities.  Resilient folk, our gardeners!

The garden named 'Sedum' at Hepburn Springs, in particular, was of great interest as it has been recently planned, planted and maintained as a case study of sensible garden-scaping in a fire-prone environment.  Along, no doubt, with many of the other visitors across the weekend, I was delighted to find very aesthetically pleasing plant combinations and an artful garden layout, rather than the barren carpark approach that all too often in Australia is our response to achieving some measure of protection from fire events.

Espaliered pears form a protective screen behind dense planting on the embankment at 'Sedum'

It was clear that the site was not an easy one in which to establish a garden - exhibiting a testing mix of heavy clay (now baked hard by the summer sun) and   exposed reefs of rock.  The garden slopes away into a gully, on an eastern aspect, with an outlook through the trunks and canopies of striking Manna Gums (Eucalyptus viminalis).  Again, while these trees are known to burn (as do all eucalypts), they are at a sensible distance from the house and therefore present an acceptable risk in balance with the beauty that they lend year-round.

The house overlooks the low planting of the surrounding garden

Planting was generally quite dense, to reduce the need for surface mulches (which are often flammable), path materials were stone, a creatively-paved area separated the house from the more flammable elements in garden beds, and as the garden's name suggests, Sedums and other fleshy selections such as Aeoniums and Cotyledons were abundant.  All of this had been achieved within 2.5 years!

Sensibly laid-out productive area of the garden

There was much to be learned from this garden - which to me represented a step forward in our horticultural response to living within environments that we know to be (sometimes disastrously) combustible.  The CFA (our state's primarily volunteer Country Fire Authority) in partnership with the owners has produced a very informative leaflet about the garden, its features and its story.  This can be read in conjunction with the CFA's more detailed general guide 'Landscaping for Bushfire' (see cfa.vic.gov.au).

Great to see the local CFA team in support also - with the sausages and burgers on the barbecue.   Your correspondent saw no option but to support the local lads and lasses, by reducing their stockpile by a measure or two.

This put a slight crimp in one's usually springy step at the second site 'Sailors Hill Garden', which was nevertheless charming, being a garden surrounding an old cottage with a most impressively robust English Oak as the centrepiece.  It was a marvellous oasis of cool green foliage - which in itself provides a measure of protection from the threat of flames and embers.  

The somewhat bucolic view towards Daylesford's Wombat Hill from under the canopy of the old English Oak at 'Sailor's Hill Garden'