Innholdsfortegnelse for No. 1 - 2024 i Country Style Specials

I must admit that I don’t have a garden. I have a collection of pot plants, but nothing rooted in the earth. Near where I live is a community garden, where rows of vegetables are planted and volunteers tend the beds. There is a large chicken coop with a tree at its centre. Whenever I feel stressed I walk to it and peer in through the fence to see what’s growing and have a chat to the chickens (I can’t imagine what passersby must think… I’m surprised I haven’t been sectioned). I feel as if I’ve been transported to the country and I feel instantly relaxed. That’s the power of a garden. It makes you feel connected to nature and can be incredibly grounding. When you’re working in the garden,…

Filtered through an ancient oak tree, dappled light flickers over this country Victorian garden, joining bobbing flowerheads and wiggling bees in a bucolic dance, choreographed by nature – and by landscape designer Tim Pilgrim. The story of this garden began when city girl Virginia was seduced by the country, encouraged by friends who had settled in Macedon in central Victoria, on the traditional lands of the Dja Dja Wurrung, Taungurung and Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung peoples. In the wake of COVID lockdowns, Melbourne had lost its charm, and Virginia says, “Every time I’d come to visit their house, it would feel like this beautiful escape from the city”. Oak Cottage, with charm in spades and more than enough room for green-thumbed tinkering, stole her heart. The adorable cottage deserved a gorgeous…

Cottage gardens are bountiful expressions of colour and life, woven through with nostalgia and romance. For Leisa Rossignol, the owner of this pretty patch located in the Southern Queensland town of Toowoomba, home to the Jagera, Giabal and Jarowair peoples, that sentiment couldn’t ring more true. Awash with delicate florals and defined with reclaimed materials and meaningful objects, her garden is a perfect fit for the sweet weatherboard cottage that has sat on the plot for more than a century. “I’ve always loved older properties and antique collectables,” says Leisa, who, along with her French-born husband Serge, has built up this delightful garden oasis on a 630-square-metre block in just a few short years. Leisa bought the property in 2015, drawn to the home’s original details of pressed-metal ceilings and…

If anyone can demonstrate the truth of the phrase, “patience is a virtue,” Barb Somervaille can. Barb and her husband Andrew live at Tallowood, an 11-hectare property in Southern Queensland’s Ravensbourne, on Jagera, Giabal and Jarowair land. They purchased the bare plot with two dams in 1998 and built a double-storey, barn-style home in a swift nine weeks. The garden, however, is a long-term project that Barb has chipped away at while homeschooling the couple’s eight children, now aged 18 to 35. “Moving out of Toowoomba to the country was a lifestyle choice, and it was my career choice to homeschool our children full-time,” says the powerhouse mum. However, when Barb and Andrew’s youngest, Daniel, began year nine at school in Toowoomba five years ago, Barb enrolled in a horticulture…

SEVERNLEA QLD At the whims of the weather and the market, farming can have more downs than ups, and sometimes lead to despair – as was the case for Queensland fruit growers Ellen and Justin Fawdon. Then they found a lifeline, and a gourmet food business blossomed on their struggling orchard. “We were at the lowest ebb in our lives, so it was like a Hail Mary when someone liked our business plan and decided to invest,” says Justin of their new enterprise, Budburst Australia, which produces gourmet stone-fruit vinegars. “This was a second chance, a new beginning.” Budburst was born in 2020, after the roller-coaster ride of farming the orchard for more than 20 years. Justin’s parents, Rosemarie and Tony, bought the 21-hectare orchard, near Severnlea in the Southern…

Danish folk have a wonderful term for the feeling of cosy comfort and soul-nourishing moments shared with loved ones. Known as ‘hygge’, this sense of the good life can be found at Cressy House Estate, a sheep and crop farm in Longford, Tasmania, not far from Launceston on the traditional lands of the Panninher people. Home to Henry and Margit Smith and their three sons, Noah, 13, Oscar, 11, and Edward, eight, the 1170-hectare property has been in Henry’s family for generations. His great-great-grandfather first leased the paddocks and Cressy House homestead in 1884, and then his great-grandfather purchased it all for £12,000 in 1914. Henry, 39, has followed in their footsteps and now runs the large-scale operation. Meanwhile, Margit, 40, grew up on a farm in a Danish town…

In a typical renovation timeline, gardens are tended to after the main building is refreshed. But the reinvention of the Swift family’s half-hectare plot in Orange, in the Central Tablelands of NSW, followed its own path. Emily Swift and her husband Ed bought the property in 2013, and although their 100-year-old weatherboard house was uninsulated and falling apart, the couple directed their attention to the landscaping first. “Everyone asked us why we were spending time on the garden, but I knew how long things could take to establish,” explains Emily, 46. “It was always our priority to start with the garden and then work backwards to the house. We knew this would be our forever home, so we wanted to do it right.” Emily and Ed, 47, were drawn to…

Bimlow Cottage and the pretty grounds that hug the 130-year-old dwelling have evolved gently since Georgie Stuart and her partner Matt Quigley purchased the property in 2011. The cottage sits on one hectare of land in the tiny hamlet of Edith, on Gundungurra land in NSW’s Central West. Edith and its surroundings are a picture of pastoral perfection. The wide, open sky meets an undulating green expanse flecked with grazing sheep and rivulets that meander through golden grasses. At an elevation of 1080 metres, the air is sharp, and the cold season brings cloaking mists and snow. The region attracts keen trout anglers, daytrippers visiting Jenolan Caves and hurried city folk looking to slow down. For Georgie and Matt, it was about leaving their Sydney life behind and starting a…

Hello, lovely gardening friends! One of the most wonderful things about being a gardener is the year-on-year learning, don’t you think? Whether you’re gardening in the same place over and over or moving from garden to garden, each passing season gives you a better idea of what to expect the next – all the fun things, as well as the pitfalls. If you’re gardening in the same place year on year, you’ll know that one of the disarming things about being an Australian gardener, in particular, depending on where in this vast country you are, is that the seasons aren’t necessarily distinct and reliable. I, though, reliably make the same mistakes every spring. Plant too many zucchini. Plant them too close together. Similarly, the same mistakes happen every summer. I…

Row upon row of bobble-headed, mauve garlic crops lead to native bush at Rose Hawkins and Steve Scott’s certified organic farm in Tenterfield in northern NSW. Sitting within eyesight of Tenterfield Creek, where the Bundjalung people are the original custodians of the land, the farm was established by Dick and Dora Rochford in the 1980s. “Dick is famous in Australia for growing garlic,” Rose says. “The farm was certified organic 35 years ago, at the start of organic farming’s popularity in Australia.” Dick experimented with garlic varieties and found that the Oriental Purple and Russian (also known as Elephant Garlic) took easily to the region’s sandy loam and temperate climate. Since buying the property in early 2018, Rose and Steve have continued to grow and sell these varieties, operating as…

There is never a bad time to soak in the landscape of Melinda and Tom Hartwright’s glorious garden in the NSW Southern Highlands. Lovingly brought to life over 10 years, their two hectares offer the couple an experience to savour in every season. “I love those mid-winter afternoons with friends around the fire,” says interior designer Melinda, founder of Melinda Hartwright Interiors. “Whenever we’ve got a big pile to burn off, we get friends around. Everyone brings camp chairs and we sit around the fire with bottles of Champagne and bowls of soup, all rugged up, as it gets dark.” But it’s in spring and summer, when the flowers are in full bloom, that Melinda can wander among her most beloved blossoms. “We didn’t have a single hydrangea in this…

The names alone evoke a strong sense of place: Spargo Creek, Moorabool, the Great Dividing Range. The hamlet – “just a sign on the road” – lies just off the freeway to Melbourne, amid thick forest, and close to Daylesford, a diverse and creative community where Natasha Morgan always stops for a morning cup of tea after dropping her children at school. Natasha worked as a landscape architect in Melbourne before moving to Spargo Creek with her ex-partner and two children, Saffron, now 12, and Oliver, 10, in 2014. “I was always a city person, born and bred in Melbourne,” she says. “When I was pregnant with Saffron, we were living in an old scout hall. It had some chalkboards in it, and I used them to write down my…