In stunning country in north-west Tasmania - where the average rainfall is an envy-inducing two metres a year! - is a garden packed full with treasures and personality.
Kaydale is the decades-long project of a family of passionate gardeners, Robert and Kay Crowden and their daughters Lesley and Amarlie. Robert bought the
property in 1962 and married Kay in 1970. The young couple were farming cattle and sheep, seed potatoes and swedes, but could see that the property
was never going to support a family. But with great foresight they guessed that all those visitors driving by on their way to Leven Canyon, Tasmania’s
largest limestone gulch, might help and in 1979 they opened one of the state’s first B&Bs.
The garden developed organically, making the most of the stone on the property for fences, retaining walls and archways, all built by Kay and Robert. Amarlie
and Lesley caught both the gardening and DIY bugs early, and have turned their hands to everything imaginable: they built the impressive walls, laid
stone paths for the vegetable garden, formed up a stream for the woodland garden, made 180 grafts to form the pear tunnel, grew 500 cuttings for a
thyme lawn, and developed a huge collection of bulbs, many grown, patiently, from seed.
The garden continues to develop - a 30-metre long stone wall, new trillium beds and stone-clad sheds - and all of it with the family’s can-do spirit and
laid-back humour.
The Fernery
The fernery was an area originally slated for a sunken tennis court, but in 1997 ideas of tennis were abandoned and 15 large tree ferns were transplanted
from elsewhere on the property to form the backbone of a fernery. Pink-flowered leatherwood trees and the yellow Tasmanian waratah are also at home
here, with masses of spring-flowering bulbs. In late summer or early autumn we tidy up the aquilegias and euphorbias that did their thing through summer
to let the Euphorbia ‘Dulcis chameleon' star. It has burgundy foliage that changes to a lovely pinky colour in the autumn.
Then in July the green parrots come in and chew the fern fronds down to sticks to get to the maturing spores. When they are done, we cut off the damaged
fronds and then give each fern a feed of sugar water, which they love. We mix a cup of sugar to a litre of water and give each fern a mugful; the really
big ones get two.
The Woodland Stream
Long-planned but slow to eventuate, the woodland stream became reality in 2007 when the girls decided to build it for their parents’ 37th wedding anniversary.
The basic shape was dug out, lined with plastic and finished with cement and stone. The job took just four days, providing an opportunity to tease
Robert who had been procrastinating about it for decades. The sound of water adds to the tranquility through all the seasons. Kay especially enjoys
it from mid-April to mid-May, when her favourite maples, including ‘Shindeshojo’, which is hot pink in spring and a lovely red in autumn - are in autumn
dress. The maples are underplanted with carpets of cyclamen. We have discovered that the cyclamen just love to be mulched with soft fall bark, which
is basically an uncomposted potting mix. So about every three years, when they are dormant in the summer, we bring in a ute load of the mulch and sprinkle
it on top of them. They have gone gangbusters since we started doing this.
To do
Blower vac the woodland paths and clean leaves from the stream. This is an every-morning job for Marlie, to make sure nothing gets blocked in the water
works.
Prune the summer-flowering perennials. In the rockery Amarlie uses a whippersnipper on the
perennial candytuft and a species snapdragon that grows to about a metre tall.
Tie up and deadhead dahlias.
Dig up and divide a clump of spring bulbs. We’ve found this creates bigger and healthier clumps, so we aim to divide one big clump every year.
Pick sedum ‘Autumn Joy’, which make great cut flowers that last for about a month in the vase, changing as they do in the garden from light pink to dark
burgundy.
Pick thornless blackberries, the last of the berry crop that starts in December with the strawberries, then goes through tosterberreis, blueberries and
thornless loganberries. Last year we picked about 120 kg of blackberries, which are all used in the restaurant.
Mad for autumn crocus
The Colchicums are one of the highlights of the garden in early autumn. Kay started with 10 bulbs of Colchicum ‘Lilac Magic’ 35 years
ago, and after falling in love with them we really wanted to see them en masse. ‘Lilac Magic’ is one of the most free-flowering of the autumn crocus,
pushing up bright blooms ahead of the foliage. We rake away the dead foliage in mid-summer so the flowers can come through clean, and they occasionally
get a top dress of blood and bone, but they really are low maintenance. We dug some up one year and put them in the shed and forgot about them, and
they still flowered!They were a bit lanky, and mostly white, but they still flowered.
The ‘wren’ fence frames them without closing off the views - and gives Armalie an opportunity to photograph the 50 metal wrens that are attached to the
mesh, as they stay still, unlike our other wrens.
Bulb rockery
Lesley is the small bulb fanatic of the family, and grows many hard-to-find bulbs from seed. In 2005, the masses of foam boxes she was using to grow the
tiny bulbs became too much, and the rockery was built, with more stone from the property. Once the stones were in place, the gaps were filled with
a mix of crushed blue metal, soil and compost. The blue metal gives the bulbs the good drainage they need in our wet climate, and the stones sit the
bulbs at the ideal height to admire their delicate forms. Most of the bulbs are spring-flowering so in summer we let the self-seeded Californina poppies
and dicentra go for it. That all gets reefed out in autumn and a fresh layer of blue metal goes over the top of the bulbs.
See more
Kaydale Lodge Gardens is on our Tasmania tour for spring 2020. Call 1300 233 200 for details. The garden is open daily from 9am and so is the tea room,
serving morning and afternoon tea and light lunches. There are three guest rooms in the Lodge. www.kaydalelodge.com.au
Plants we love
Fritillaria
There are more than 100 species of Fritillaria, and Lesley has collected 37 so far. This is F. Persica, taller and more free-flowering
than many of the family.
Hellebore
Amarlie has been growing and breeding hellebores since 2000. The large beds of plants are mown in late May so that the July - September flowers can be
admired without the distraction of old foliage.
Yellow waratah
We’re lucky to have the waratah native to our region, and once they are established in the garden they need no special care beyond the odd prune after
flowering. We’re very excited to have flowered the very rare yellow form in the garden.
Daffodils
Robert has been obsessed with daffodils since the ‘70s and now has more than 1800 varieties. During spring more than 1,500 bunches are handed out to visitors.
Peonies
Possums love roses but not peonies, so we have been collecting them for more than a decade, and now more than 140 different varieties peak between the
end of November until Christmas.
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Cyclamen
Massed Cyclamen hederifolium join colchicums and nerines under the maples through the garden in autumn. The marbled, ivy-shaped leaves are as
attractive as the flowers.