• ***Looking west to the house, the Spiney of Chinese Pistachio, the dam with a Dabchick nest and the very large Yellow Box.***

Sue Salmon grows food and flowers on her farm for businesses in nearby Wagga, NSW.

This is her farming story - get ready to grow your eyes and appetite.

by

Sue Salmon

Origins of my garden

You might begin a garden from scratch or you may inherit a garden. Here’s how I came to my garden - thanks, Dad.

I first came to where I now garden in my father's arms, a newly minted member of the human race. Years later I returned to help my mother look after my father, who had no intention of ever leaving the home he’d brought me to and from where he would make a lifetime’s efforts to raise his family. In returning I took the opportunity to build on the sound bones of the garden my father created.

In the image above I’m looking east to the dam where he set up his tent on his return from the war to begin his endeavours, a dam now filled to the brim with the rain of three consecutive La Niña years and a noisy chorus of frogs.

***• Sweetpeas on bamboo trellis, Voilette de Provence artichokes in foreground***

It sits outside the house perimeter fence beyond the now extensive forms of mature specimen trees my father planted well over half a century ago. Their glistening spring coronas of brilliant greens all pleasingly arrayed in a semicircle at the front of his home - a house that he built from termite resistant calitrus pine, given to him by a neighbour so long as he removed the whole trees and left no stumps. Beyond the dam is a spiney of Chinese pistachio I’ve planted so the garden isn't confined by the fence but is walking into the front paddock.

Superb parrots add their flash of emerald green to the landscape - and is that the slow, circling flight of a wedge tail eagle disappearing behind the farm’s largest yellow box tree that’s stood for hundreds of years beside the dam? Birds, trees and plants create this landscape and fill my days with wonder.

To have any semblance of a garden in this frequently unforgiving place water is an essential ingredient.

My father took his shovel and hired a neighbour with his shovel and together they dug a trench to lay piping one and a half miles from the Murrumbidgee River so the water could make its way to his garden. (It was deep enough for a plow to run over it without breaking the buried pipes.) Contrary to the views of his neighbours the water flowed all that way. Then he planted his fruit trees to start his garden.

***• Fruit Tree Protection to exclude Rosellas and allow Eastern Brown Snakes to proceed unhindered***

It’s hard to say whether the presence of perfumes or the presence of nature in my garden pleases me more.

Mystery abounds in both.

Training as a member of the Australian Olive Oil Sensory Panel has sharpened my olfactory skills to be able to detect the extra virgin fruity positive attributes of olive oils as well as possible defects but that training has also enhanced my appreciation of all the scents that are present periodically in the garden. There’s a nearby gold award-winning olive oil business with delicious olive oil, Wollundry Grove Olive Oil.

I love opening the front windows in spring to catch the delicate fruity trail of the little flowering, false grape bunches on the ornamental grapevine I’ve planted to screen the early morning sun from the front of the house.

***• Section of flower garden with roses and artemisia***

Unexpected scents signal the arrival of new blossoms. To celebrate the beauty of perfume fragrant plants are not confined to the flower garden.

I’ve constructed bamboo scaffolding between the old, still abundant Bartlett and Williams bon chretien pear trees and the broad bean patch in the vegetable garden. Turn in one direction for a heady blast of heirloom sweet peas clambering to the top of the bamboo. It’s a fragrance that has the florist at Wagga’s Scooter Flowers swooning and saying “these are real sweet peas, Sue”. Turn in the other direction for the distinctive, surprising, floral aroma of broad bean blossoms. In early spring I walk out the back door to be bowled over by the intensity of seemingly billions of citrus blossoms, most falling to the ground for the trees cannot support such a load of delicious abundance - Washington navel, Valencia and Taracco and Arnold blood oranges, Nagami cumquats, Lisbon lemons, Tahitian Limes, Makrut limes, Imperial mandarins, Lemonades, Tangerines and Tangelos.

Alternatively there’s nature in the garden, some that I can see and so much that I can’t. Much is beneficial. On a regular basis a posse of choughs prowl through the mulch. I thank them for eliminating the snails and removing other pests I have no name for, though they could do a better job on the slugs. True, the choughs toss aside the mulch and it’s a job to restore it but they are welcome any time they choose to visit. It’s a heart lifting experience to glimpse the fast moving squadrons of Superb parrots that dash through the garden to seek refuge in the iron barks my father planted so they can alight on the oats, help themselves to grain and return to the refuge of the iron barks. Pobblebonk frogs burrow into the sandy soil of the garden and miraculously avoid the edge of my shovel. Four resident magpies do sterling work extracting bugs and amuse me as they dive bomb the choughs, who fling themselves into the air in alarm to avoid the mischievous magpies. Everyone, including the gardener makes themselves scarce when a deadly brown snake comes exploring. Consequently I’ve devised a system to keep the Rosellas off the fruit trees and at the same time allow brown snakes to visit unhindered. In the early morning the ardent butcher bird broadcasts his gorgeous melodies from the tallest bare branch of a yellow box on the western side of the garden. In the night an unseen mopoke visits to make his ancient call and to see if another will answer that call. A day in the garden can pass in a flash but never without delight or surprise.

Structure and development of the garden

On the northern side of the house flower beds are layed out and behind the flowers the vegetable garden, which in turn is surrounded by the fruit orchard further north and west. On the southern side of the house lies the citrus orchard, set back to avoid any shade. In all there are 19 trees in the citrus orchard and 28 in the fruit orchard which I water by hand on demand. A big challenge in a hot dry summer in spite of endless mulching.

Some of the orchard trees were planted by my father, some I’ve planted to replace lost species he planted and some I’ve introduced to please myself. In the pome fruit orchard there are four apricot varieties, three peach varieties and a nectarine. One of the apricots is a Moorpark which he wasn’t able to source but how he would extol the virtues of Moorpark apricots. There are five plum varieties, the latest addition to the orchard, a Mirabelle plum has been added to a D’Agen, a Santa Rosa, a Greengage and a Narrabeen. There are two cherry varieties including a Morello sour cherry, three different pomegranates, a Smyrna quince and a Fuyu persimmon, one Bramley apple, two Black Genoa Figs, a pink Guava, a weeping Mulberry and two paper shell almonds. The emphasis is on heirloom fruit varieties. For an avid gardener a garden is rarely complete. There’s a little space left for some hazelnuts and three pistachios.

***• Cecile Brunner roses in Scooter Flowers***

The flower beds are set back from the house so those inside look out onto the flower garden. A spine of delicate, feathery, fine blue grey artemesia runs east west binding four separate flower beds together visually. It’s an artemesia that the florist at Scooter Flowers in Wagga Wagga cannot get enough of. Once there was just a tiny clump under a tree but through continual subdivision it’s now the unifying element in the flower garden. Roses are another unifying element. Three have been long established - my mother’s favourite Cecile Brunner, an 1881 rose with its delicate sprays of tiny shell pink rose buds and its exquisite, old fashioned perfume, a pale peach tea rose that my father’s sister grew and a third of unknown origin also with a fabulous perfume. Long establish gardens abound with memories.

While the makeup of the orchards and flower garden are relatively stable the vegetable garden is a continuous work in progress for so many plants are annuals. There’s always a plan. Invariably the plan goes awry. Not all the seeds germinate. Some seeds succumb to difficult conditions. The vegetable garden is the domain of the unusual for I’m a gardener who loves to cook. Savoy cabbage for Chou farci and purple French artichokes for stuffed artichoke.

Plantings are rotated to reduce the possibility of disease and these plantings are supported by companion plants, all planted at the most beneficial time of the moon unless of course there’s rain forecast and in go the seeds, and out goes the idea of moon phases.

My years of environmental campaigning means that it’s an organic garden.

***• Savoy cabbage becomes steaming hot Chou Farci***

***• Vegetable box garden beds under Bartlett Pear***

My friends at Wollundry Grove, a gold medal winning local olive grove, bring the pressings from the oil, which has broken down in granite pits so this mulch comes with nuggets of softened granite rock to enhance my super sandy soil. The structures that support the vegetable garden have been sourced from about the farm. An old steel gate turned vertically holds the boysenberry, the passionfruit clambers over an old steel sheep pen rail. Heavy timber beams create the boundaries of the vegetable garden and form tiers to hold the soil where artichokes, asparagus and garlic may grow. Old vegetable boxes sliced in half form shaded beds under the pear tree for Paris Match carrots and delicate greens. There are around 40 heritage tomatoes which need staking and covering from fruit flies and tomato worms.

Rain is forecast for later today and I want to add some butter and haricot beans to the French flageolet, purple snake and purple king beans I’ve already planted.

Time to fly to the garden for this is a garden that now relies on my efforts alone.

Sue Salmon