Welcome to Good Gardening Ways
A warm hello and welcome. My name is Jason and together with my wife Janette over the last twenty years we have transformed a rural house surrounded by a paddock into a beautifully landscaped garden that surprises and delights everyone that visits. We took a grassy field that turned brown at the height of summer, devoid of insects and birds into a lush, vibrant and diverse garden full of life that has beauty and interest in every season of the year.
Our property when we first purchased it
We soon discovered we had only had about 2.5 cm or 1 inch of topsoil before we hit rock and clay. Right from the start we undertsood that we needed to improve the soil and get some shade so that the ground didn’t heat up so much and dry out. Another top priority was establishishing garden to help break up the intense winds we get at differnt times of the year.
Over an acre is landscaped in a way that pleases the senses. Paths meander to reveal different outside “Garden Rooms” and with each step something new and different comes into view. Our property is nestled 350m above sea level on the backbone of a mountain range on the island state of Tasmania in Australia.
It is hard to pigeon hole our garden into a particular style. There are elements of many from cottage to formal and woodland. Roses, lupins, foxgloves, winter roses (Hellebores), daffodils and Grannies Bonnets (Aquilegia) abound but so too do lilies, gladioli, irises, hedges, flowering cherries and other lovely specimen trees. There is also a productive orchard of various varieties of apples, apricots and plums and a kitchen garden. It really needs to be seen and experienced.
A mixture of colour, texture and form
I love how you can play with different colours, heights and foliage type in a garden. And yes that is a trampoline in the photo on the left. Our kids have grown and it is gone now but our garden has always been a garden to use and enjoy. I think that is important.
If you have found us from following links from Pinterest then you already have an idea of the diverse beauty. If you have found us from other means then please search for Good Gardening Ways on Pinterest and immerse yourself in the professionally shot photo’s (Photography being one of my talented wife’s careers). Also have a look at our photo gallery here. To give you a sense for for what people feel about our garden I can give you some examples of requests we have had, events that have happened and tours that have occurred.
One request that stands out for me is a lady who came on an charity open garden day and sat and stayed in the garden for the entire time it was open to the public. At the end she said that the garden had touched her and she even offered to pay us to just come and be able to sit in the garden to experience it again. We have hosted two weddings in our garden although this is not something we promote. I will never forget at one of the weddings some guests who were grown men and who came from Queensland acted like little boys in delight. They sheepishly asked if they could pick and eat apples from one of our trees. They explained that coming from a tropical climate they had never in their lives picked and eaten fresh apples. From the looks on their faces and the noises they made you would have thought they were eating some highly expensive delicacy.
We host tours of our garden for Not For Profit organisations who want to get people out and about and any other groups that are interested. Last year a group of botanical artists came and were fascinated by the diversity of colour, texture and form found throughout our landscape. They asked more questions than any other group has and my wife was exhausted but elated after.
Also last year we had a International Tour Company book to bring a full bus load of avid gardeners through our garden. The people on the tour had paid $5,750 each for a 10 day Gardening Tour of gardens around Tasmania. To say we felt pressure to have our garden in its best shape for them was an understatement. When the huge Tour bus pulled up and people started pouring out it was a bit overwhelming but they were all lovely and really knew their stuff. They thoroughly enjoyed our garden. One gentlemen told us he had just bought a property that was a blank canvas and he booked the tour to get inspiration. All the other gardens they had seen had been very formal and our garden was a revelation for him. Ours took him back to his childhood and was also something he felt he could achieve. The tying together of outdoor rooms encompassing different planting styles captivated him and he decided that this was how he would design his garden. The tour must have gone well because the tour company has booked us again for tours for the next two years.
The above examples aren’t given to brag or boast but to give you a sense of how our garden is perceived and as gardeners what Janette and I can achieve.
We started the garden with cuttings we struck from our previous garden and asking locals for plants that thrive in the area. So roses, daffodils, lupins, foxgloves and Granny’s bonnets were the first things planted. We renovated the house when we first bought the property so there wasn’t a lot on spare money for buying plants. So we bought bare rooted trees and shrubs in the winter which were cheaper. We did buy a couple of mature trees just to add some height to the landscape. We quickly released these were a waste of money as the larger trees took a long time to acclimatise and over a few years were caught up to by bare rooted trees we had bought of the same variety.
We did all the paths, retaining walls, garden bed edging, irrigation piping and planting ourselves. We learnt by our successes and from things that didn’t go right the first time and continue to learn constantly as our garden matures.
So this gets me to the purpose of this blog. Both Janette and I want to share with you our gardening knowledge and experiences.
For us gardening is our sport, our hobby and our passion. We have educated ourselves through practical experience, books, talking with other gardeners and courses over the last 30 years so that we can continuously improve our gardening skills. We have truely come to appreciate that you if you consistently do the correct things for your plants they will reward you generously (most of the time). What is even better is that unlike what most people think the “correct” thing often doesn’t actually take that much more effort or time. It’s about knowing what to do when. Feeding your plants with the right things and at the right times is a big part of this. Our free garden feeding calendar tells you in a simple and clear way what and when to feed all the common plants in your garden to get great results. You can get it here.
So future articles will centre on how to design a garden, plant selection, how to plant and all the tips and tricks that show you how we maintain and nurture our garden through the seasons.
Also gardens always evolve so there are lots of mini, medium and large projects happening in our garden that we will share with you. Recently we have just removed 7 trees which has opened up a large spaces for us to create whole new garden rooms from scratch. We will share with you how we design and plan the gardens, how to create garden beds easily, plant selection, good planting techniques including how to plant and stake trees properly, watering, fertilising and how to incorporate artistic statement pieces into your design.
For us this new garden room is going to be an exciting project especially as we are now in winter and it will burst into life in Spring for the first time.
So that you don’t miss any of our updates why don’t you join our mailing list and at the same time you get to download our helpful feeding guide at no cost.
Until next time, have fun gardening and stay safe!
Jason & Janette Good