OUTDOORS Getting the balance right
HEARTLAND: LESSONS FROM A LIVING EXPERIMENT
Tucked away in suburban Melbourne, Jac Semmler’s Heartland is a flourishing home garden and living laboratory, where constant experimentation and observation feed into her acclaimed plant practice, Super Bloom. Across the garden’s 400 square metres, Jac trials a diverse mix of native and non-native species, testing their adaptability to local conditions and their ability to coexist in ecologically sensitive ways.
The garden is in constant flux, shaped by seasons, microclimates, and Jac’s hands-on curiosity that treats success and failure as equal parts of the learning process. Through Heartland, Jac explores how resilient, place-responsive gardens can emerge from thoughtful trial and error, offering insights not just for her own space, but for gardeners everywhere. She shared some of these insights with…
