Hinterland secret garden revealed
winter 09
“IT’S A MENAGERIE!”
Sue Neale says, describing her and husband John’s 1.2 hectare property situated on the Blackall Range in the Sunshine Coast hinterland.
Andrea Bocelli’s honeyed Italian voice booms from the little workers’ cottage, floating lazily down the green hills and into the Wedgwood-blue sea. A couple of guinea fowl perch in the jacaranda tree gossiping to each other, an easterly breeze sweeps through the westringia and rustles the bed of agapanthus. A silver chair sits lonely at the end of a pathway, a beaded necklace drips from a magnolia branch and a crystal chandelier hangs from a tipuana branch.
Five years ago this ‘menagerie’ was anything but the loved, weed-free, whimsical garden it is today. Sue and John decided to re-locate from their Highgate Hill home in Brisbane when they got wind of their two twenty-something daughters moving home.
“The girls came home from the UK and were going to move in. I said to Johnno ‘quick go and find somewhere’,” laughs Sue.
They decided to look north of Brisbane, near the European-styled mountain village of Montville, a close distance for their children to visit and a region with an impressive rainfall of 1700mm a year. These were influencing factor in the Neales’ decision to move north. Before Brisbane, they owned a dry land farming property on the Darling Downs in western Queensland where drought became a way of life.
It was John who discovered the sloping parcel of land known as ‘The Chute’, named after the old timber chute that used to run past the front of the property. It had a run-down workers’ cottage, an antiquated Hills Hoist, rusted car bodies, a plethora of privet, lantana, black wattle scrub and a handful of pesky scrub turkeys.
“It was a shit box,” Sue says. “Johnno then showed me a couple of other places and I said to Johnno ‘you’d better take me back to that first one’. The others were in suburbia and I couldn’t stand that. The idea was to have a bit of space after Brisbane.”
It was rumoured that The Chute had 180 degree views stretching to Bribie Island in the south and to Mount Coolum in the north. Armed with machetes and kerosene tins, Sue and John began to clear their Amazonian forest in search of their promised valley and ocean views.
“For the first six months I had my derrière in the air, we were stick picking, clipping, burning and re-planting constantly,” Sue says.
The couple was spurred on when they discovered six-metre high camelias, fruit-laden mango trees, a tipuana tree, a gigantic Chinese lucky plant, a mature frangipani tree and an established wisteria vine. Another discovery was a jasmine hedge that had been planted on the boundary to buffer the property from the road.
“It kept us going to discover new plants amongst the privet. Old Mrs Butts who was the original owner had a beautiful garden and must have loved perfumes,” Sue says.
“The whole place was covered in hoya, all my life I’ve carried a hoya around, they were something we treated with reverence in the bush, carrying them from garden to garden and here it’s in abundance.
“Also an old mulberry tree was here. I couldn’t pull that out because every old house needs an old mulberry tree.”
Sue has a talent for re-inventing lost treasures that she’s collected from antique shops, garage sales and travels throughout their life and transforming them into eclectic art pieces that adorn the garden and three-bedroom cottage.
“I think you should use things; I get a buzz out of creating,” Sue says. It’s no surprise that in between maintaining her own garden, Sue teaches and shows home owners how to present their most treasured life items in their home rather than keeping them tucked away in cupboards and drawers.
Five years on and The Chute is a patchwork of spaces joined by winding pathways sprinkled with hidden treasures and brought to life with beds of mass colour.
“I don’t do rooms; I create pathways that encourage people to discover more of the garden,” Sue says. “I’m into bulk planting. I’m not a fiddly gardener – life is too short to be fiddly.”
A chipped angelic face sits in a bed of mauve blossoms, a handful of tiny white sea shells are scattered near a terracotta pot, a mosaic mirror ball sits to the side of a path reflecting the salmon colour in a nearby shrimp plant (Justicia brandegeeana), and a collection of cow bones are assembled on a tree stump at the end of a wisteria walkway.
The circular driveway is described by Sue as “what I call tropical”, with three tropical birch trees in the centre under planted with irises and yellow cosmos. A citrus grove of orange and mandarin trees lines one side of the drive and an old mango tree shades a bed of rosemary, tuber roses, Louisiana irises and red dahlias. There’s a chook yard nestled under the jacaranda tree and a rusty, wrought-iron garden gate (cleverly gifted by their son-in-law) sits against an old fence picket.
Under a handsome gordonia tree lies Sue’s ‘Little Italy’. Bordered by Italian style white balustrade, there is a long cement table with rusty foldaway red chairs. The gordonia has candles in her folds and a weathered candle chandelier hangs from a branch.
“My girls call it ‘Mum’s little Italy’. I had bought the balustrade; it was the first thing that came here. The chairs around the table were given to me by a friend – they are from Jandowae. I was born in Jandowae, so that’s relevant. It’s the most magnificent gordonia; it’s the biggest one I’ve ever seen.”
Below Little Italy on the boundary of the property is the native area of the garden purposefully planted for the birds. There are grevilleas, bottlebrushes, banksias and swamp foxtail grasses interspersed with purple fountain grass and a metre-high, mosaic-mirrored pyramid.
“In the early morning and late afternoon the birds are just beautiful. Usually the king parrots come in and feed and the little firetails … I couldn’t believe it when they arrived,” Sue says. “There are six kookaburras that live here permanently and at night time the owls sit down at Little Italy.”
Thanks to its creative owners, The Chute has been transformed from an unloved, overgrown privet block to a treasured garden filled with secret pathways, beds of colour and eclectic garden art.
“I love my garden, I’ll always garden,” Sue says.
words and photos kate johns