I grab a glass of wine and head out my back door for one of several outdoor settings. From there I gaze across Perth’s hills and lose myself amidst the trees. Its bliss! I don’t need to go much further than my own back yard to enjoy respite from my day. Yet, just down the road there is an option.
Local back yards
I could jump in my car and drive a few minutes to the stunning Mundaring Weir, pictured above. This water catchment serves Perth and many country towns in regional WA, thanks to CY O’Connor’s vision. I wrote about the Golden Pipeline that kept my mother’s garden alive, here.
A back yard ‘just down the road’
Recently a girlfriend invited me to visit her in Beverley to see her newly purchased home. What a brilliantly tidy town! Filled with tourist opportunities. We enjoyed breakfast across the road from this vintage car. Plus a meal at the local pub, a walk across the bridge that crosses the Avon river. We enjoyed our stay in the local caravan park, within easy walking distance of the main street and our dining venues. With an active theatre arts centre that attracts singers and shows of well known artists, we bound to find our way back there in the near future. Check out my reel of our recent visit here.
A regional back yard or two
Being a tourist in my own backyard is immeasurably pleasurable. I get to see great deal for much less money. No airfares for a start! Especially if I treat regional towns in WA as part of backyard.
Throughout my life, many family-focused road trips have taken me along the Great Southern Highway and other roads through the wheat-belt. I’ve passed through historic York, Quairading, Shackleton and ended my trip in Bruce Rock, my hometown more times than I can count!
There’s many sites worth seeing in each town. An historic walk of mosaic images captures my attention, as it proudly shows Bruce Rock’s history in works of art. In the image below, my mother, the grandddaughter of pioneering families, shows one of the slabs my brother and I managed to create.
As we pass through Quairading I note Jordan Sprigg’s sculpture of the bull. His works of art have gained world wide repute.
Some of the many ‘back yards’ I’ve visited in WA include Geraldton and Greenough. I loved our trip to Greenough. The historic place we stayed at was filled with curios. Nearby was a prospective source of family history, though that proved to be a wrong rabbit hole. But hey, that’s the fun of seeking out links.
City back yards
Weary of car travel? I chose to head across Canada by train rather than car. It is an exciting and relaxing option. But let’s see how that can translate to being in one’s own back yard.
Train travel is a wonderful option. My friend, Maureen Helen wrote about in her trip to Perth airport as a day’s outing.
Returning nearer to my own back yard
There are other options too. My local area holds many treasures. I plan to explore them. Like the Perth’s Hills Open Studios held each year. I wrote about it here.
There’s the local coffee shop, Whites Mill & Grind that serves one of the best coffees in town, along with delicious bagels. Just opposite a park, the staff willingly bring your take-away order to you while you chat under the trees!
Travelling in my own back yard is something I plan to do more of over the coming months. I’ll seek to share some of my discoveries along the way.
As a child, I lived on a farm a couple of miles out of a small country town in Western Australia. In the central wheat-belt it was ‘as hot as hades’ in summer and darn cold in winter. It was in this same environment that my mother’s own childhood taught her to grow ‘tough’ plants.
‘insertiums and lillybulls’
I recall a time believing that the silvery grey, five-thousand-gallon water tank that stood by our back door, was possibly on fire and that’s why firemen used water tanks. You see, it was the colour of the nasturtiums that tricked my thinking into believing some weird story that linked the two! Vivid oranges and yellows clung to and licked the sides of the tank, no doubt held in place by an invisible framework of ‘chicken wire’ that held the long stems.
My mother grew ‘insertiums and lillybulls’ in her own childhood garden – or perhaps her mother did, and that’s simply what her memory recalled. Even so, in a lengthy poem I wrote for my mother’s 70th birthday, to capture something of her life, these unique sub-names are recorded for familial posterity.
At the base of the water tank were lily bulbs, and another oddity that never actually grew at all.
Today I grow Nasturtiums at the foot of a huge Zamia Palm we inherited on the purchase of our foothills home. They emblazon the edge of the garden bed and scatter their seed pods onto the nearby lawn. As I wandered through my mixed garden it struck me how it too is a mix: somewhere between” let’s do all native plants” (West Australian, and in particular the hills) and country cottage. Oh, and one other range of hardy plants. Geraniums and succulents.
Other hardy plants
My mother also grew a large variety of geraniums and pelargoniums. (Check out here for the discussion of whether it’s a geranium or a pelargonium)
Our second childhood home garden
On the farm property named after my parents: “Kenberdale”, there were numerous plants my mother grew with great delight, pride and joy. Amongst them, in my mind’s eye, I see mauve and pink Zincas and other pretty flowers in the garden beds that lined the fence at the front of the homestead.
It was from this farm base that my mother undertook the brave venture of beginning a plant nursery. Initially she sold plants she grew herself. Gradually, even though the farm was 16 miles from the nearest town, 17 from another town and about 30 from a major town, she drew customers district wide. Many years later, after discovering how much in demand plants were, my parents began a garden centre in Merredin, the largest town in the district. Her garden nursery won mention in the local newspaper. If there’d been awareness of entrepreneurial recognition, I’m sure she qualified. She ran the centre for over ten years, and won the loyalty of customers who travelled miles to her centre, for her potted plants and her gardening advice.
(My parents in the garden centre they opened in Merredin. Ack: Newspaper source unknown. Please advise me if you are aware of the source.)
How do succulents fit into my idea of a garden?
In short, they don’t! Or should I say, they didn’t. Not until I realized that my mother’s capacity and wisdom in growing a plants was based on sheer necessity. Necessity to save water while, at the same time, to cater to her passion to garden. She discovered, researched and probably used knowledge from her childhood to grow plants that needed minimal ‘tlc’: tender loving care. Many of them were succulents.
We lived ‘on the edge of the desert’ – or so it seemed to my brother’s partner when she first visited the family farm, sixteen miles east of the nearest town. Dry and dusty in summer, it may well have appeared desert-like. Not quite, geographically, but when the main water supply is that which is piped the 300kms or 180 plus miles, from a weir in the capital city via the Golden Pipeline and its subsidiary lines, it’s probably a justified exclamation. It may be well worth noting, that if it hadn’t been for CY OConnor’s vision to establish the Pipeline, many of the rural towns in WA may well have never been established.
Hence, you may see why my mother grew succulents.
Bright pots complemented the succulents along her garden wall in her final home.
A massive cactus grew beyond the yard that contained her well-watered cottage garden. Well-watered? Yes. From the supply of tank water stored in an overhead tank, and pumped religiously onto the garden and buffalo grass lawn (later ‘lipia’ as it was more ‘water friendly’. And I might add, prettier and less prickly to sit on, oh, except for the bees that liked the flowers!)
How did the farm capture water?
As well as the water stored in the tank, piped water from the main line fed into farm troughs for the livestock.
At some stage, my father had a massive dam, built barley 500 meters from the house. This supplemented farm needs. His pride and joy, the only dam he built on the property, was almost washed away by flooding rains in the following year. Fortunately, the banks withstood the deluge that channeled itself into the dam.
There was also a natural soak and a natural catchment area between two massive swathes of granite rock in another area on the farm. This, however, was intended for the sheep. Not my mother’s garden.
Back to My Mother’s garden
My mother’s first gardens were those of her childhood on Stoneleigh and Greenacres, her two childhood farms. From there she resided briefly in Bruce Rock with her parents, while she worked in the local town. When she married and moved to the ‘cottage’, as we fondly named it, on the farm two miles out of the town, she established a modest garden, mostly of ‘tough plants’.
I recall raised granite stone beds, dry earth and a succulent or two. This was my earliest home. It stood at the base of two massive granite outcrops, and, as I recall, was fed only by rain water from the tanks the nasturtiums grew over. (I don’t recall, but there may have been piped water from the town supply).
That’s one element of ‘a long story’ about my background to succulents.
The next chapter
When my mother passed away, we discovered hefty concrete planters of succulents littered through her garden beds in the home she lived in. I was amazed to discover hardy Jade and many others I’ve no names for! We had her permission to transfer the potted plants into our care. Today they are ‘looking good’ in their new space.
Dry spell
It’s been a long dry spell here, in Perth WA. Since October last year, Perth recorded just 21.8 millimetres of rain in the six months to March 2024, marking the city’s driest six-month spell in 150 years.
So these tough plants have needed to be watered with scheme water. This water comes from the same source as that which serves the wheat-belt. It strikes me how small this vast state is: the same weir supplying a city, and still feeding the rural towns along the pipe lines built in the early 1900’s, servicing towns that manage to grow gardens despite being on the edge of the extremely dry hinterland. It makes me wonder how the pioneers managed. More on that, in a future post.
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