Distinguished British garden designer Arne Maynard wrote that, “A successful garden is one that has a sense of place, a perfect harmony between house, garden, history, owners and the surrounding landscape”. Of no place in Australia is this truer than the garden created by Mickey Robertson at Glenmore House, a delightful property nestled in the Razorback Ranges, about an hour’s drive southwest of Sydney.

Mickey and her British-born husband Larry first saw the property in 1988, fell in love with it and promptly purchased it. It was in a state of what one might call romantic desuetude. “We intended to use it as a weekender but it has totally transformed my life,” says Mickey.

The house was habitable by the end of 1989, but not as cosy as it is now. “We installed a bathroom upstairs and it was the only source of hot water. I used to trudge up and down with a bucket for washing up.”

Renovation, enlargement and decoration (Mickey is also an interior designer) of the 1850 stone house accomplished, Mickey turned her attention to the garden. A number of outbuildings dotted around the site, a former dairy, a barn, stables and a hayshed, were all in somewhat rickety condition when the couple bought the property. Now restored, they have dictated the form of the garden.

“The garden is arranged so it can be looked at to and from, and between, the buildings,” she says.

Mickey is a self-taught gardener. She has read every garden book and magazine she could get her hands on. As she reels off the names of celebrated gardens she’s visited, one senses that seeing how others work has been an invaluable tool for her horticultural education.

However, reading and watching how others garden are no substitutes for trial and error, and Mickey admits to some of the latter. Inspired by images of Monet’s garden at Giverney, she bought hundreds of pink tulips, popped them in and not a single one came up.

It was something of a leap from failed tulip bulbs to vegetables, but one that has been neatly accomplished. Of course there are still flowers (current favourites are scented pelargoniums) but the vegie patch has become her passion. Every spare moment she has is spent lovingly tending the fledgling vegetables, rotating crops, and planting unusual varieties such as ruby Brussels sprouts, kale and purple broccoli.

All her vegetables are raised from seed and wherever possible, she seeks out heritage and organic varieties. Diggers Seeds in Victoria, Eden Seeds in Queensland and Green Patch Organic Seeds in Taree, New South Wales, are her chief sources of supply and it is this interest in growing vegetables that  has led Mickey to inaugurate, with garden expert Linda Ross, a series of courses on kitchen gardening. As ye sow, so shall ye reap, and attendees get to eat produce fresh from the garden.

There are also ancillary activities, such as lessons in composting, propagation and seed raising, as well as more exotic techniques such as espaliering, the traditional technique of growing fruit trees in confined spaces and training them into decorative patterns.

Currently, Mickey is creating an arch of espaliered apple trees, the centrepiece in a vegetable garden that, by contrast to the free form of the main garden, is ordered and geometric – four rectangular beds are arranged around the archway, each containing different varieties of vegetables and herbs, set up with an eye to aesthetics as well as edibility.

“Everyone who comes here falls in love with the place,” says Mickey. “There was a 12-year-old boy here the other day and he said, ‘When I grow up, I’m going to be rich and I’ll come and buy your house so don’t sell it in the meantime’.”

Story by Leo Schofield
Photography by John Paul Urizar