Foxglove Spires

Some favourite images from Foxglove Spires – the shimmering shadows cast onto red and gold leaves through the autumn tracery of a tunnel of Manchurian pear; a green wooden bridge reflected in a mirror-still pond; the ‘ruins’ gathering moss in the shade of giant trees; the roses rampant and fragrant against a wide blue sky; self-seeded cosmos, cleome and zinnia shimmering in late-afternoon light; a bowl of quinces, with a scattering of autumn leaves on a marble-topped wrought iron table. And the word that springs to mind when contemplating these garden pictures? Romantic.

“I’m ridiculously romantic,” agrees the garden’s creator Sue Southam, “and I just seem to get worse as I get older!” Perhaps, she muses it’s a way of blocking out harsh reality, but more likely, it’s just an expression of who she is. “I was more practical when I was younger, and the kids needed me to be. They’ve grown up and moved on, and given me the opportunity to be who I really am – and to love roses in probably a sick way!” she laughs.

While roses have long held a mortgage on romance, Sue’s romantic inclinations are less Valentines’ Day card pretty, and more wild, overgrown and naturally abandoned. It’s the style of romance loved by gothic novelists and 19th century poets, of ephemera and the impermanence of things.  And for that, a garden must have maturity.

Foxglove Spires has grown and matured along with Sue, her husband Peter, and her two daughters, who are now in their 20s. The older garden has a grace and charm that wasn’t present when it was a sprightly, fresh version of itself. “I love it more and more as it has become more overgrown,” says Sue. “I love the fallen leaves, the thickening trunks, the wildness. I was a bit impatient for this phase of the garden really. I remember I would go and visit my mum’s garden and bring home branches from her lichen-covered apple trees and try to establish the lichen on my shiny young apples, but lichen follows it’s own timetable, and has to wait for that nice open, aged bark.”

Not everyone is such a fan of the charms of maturity. “My husband tears his hair out and wants to tidy up – he’s a man! – but I keep saying ‘leave it! leave it!’ – to the Virginia creeper you can’t get to the washing line because of but is just about to colour, or the wisteria threatening to overtake everything.”

Of course there’s a dilemma in having the garden open to the public, and liking a wild, unordered appearance.  Foxglove Spires is open every day of the year, and a constant stream of visitors, in private cars, and in buses, passes through the garden and the attached nursery, café and gift and curio shops in picturesque Tilba Tilba just south of Narooma on one of the most beautiful stretches of the New South Wales coast.  “There’s an accepted level of tidiness in an open garden,” laments Sue. “If the lavender seeds in the middle of the path I want to leave it there, and that’s a liability problem! It’s hard to balance.” On the other hand a truly tidy garden would be impossible, given that Sue does all the work herself, with some help from her mum and her daughter, with building works courtesy of her welder husband.

Sue dates the garden’s mature period from about four years ago, twenty years after she first moved in.  Maturity has not been the only change in those two decades; Sue has also seen a change in the prevailing conditions. “When we first moved here it was enormously wet,” she says, “and an English-style of planting seemed to suit the conditions, and the cottage.  But as the drought kicked in and the garden became drier I had to move to different plants. We put in lavender and bulbs, the roses did really well and I could plant more, and I could go crazy for geraniums.”

The change in planting echoed a changed in Sue’s own aesthetic, as she became more influenced by French stye. We are sitting talking about her garden under a glassed in ‘conservatory’, fitted with leadlight windows salvaged from house sales up and down the coast, floored with a soft grey gravel, and furnished with wrought iron chairs, tables, and a daybed covered in patterned cushions. An urn of asters and roses is softly starting to drop petals, and bunches of dried hydrangeas lay against gilt frames stacked against a stone wall.

There’s a charming Provencal ambience to the garden now, and its furnishing, and Sue acknowledges that she’s “developed more of a French style as I’ve got older”. It’s a style inspired purely by pictures in magazines - Sue has never travelled outside of Australia, indeed apart from a single trip to Victoria, she’s never left NSW. Nevertheless her strong aesthetic sense continues to guide the development of the garden, and to create those lasting romantic pictures that make a visit to Foxglove Spires so satisfying.

Details

Foxglove Spires, in Corkhill Drive, Tilba Tilba, is open seven days a week, entry $7. 

Spires Nursery, just outside the garden gate has a wide selection of cottage and perennial plants, including many featured in the garden, as well as some exciting grafted grevilleas, unusual food plants and all kinds of roses. Open every day, 9-5, (02) 4437 7196.