Tasmania - Island of Beauty where I Garden
A beautiful Island Eden for my Gardens of Paradise
{PART TWO of WINTER IN A TASMANIAN GARDEN} Part one may be read here
It is now one year that I have been relating to you the stories from our two gardens. I thought you may be interested to discover where we all live
Tasmania, the smallest state of vast Australia is full of mountains and rivers. Hobart with the second deepest port in the world, shelters beneath a lovely mountain called Mt.Wellington, which at the moment has a good covering of snow. Some years, we only see snow on the mountain for a handful of days. The last few years we have worried that the mildness of the weather was due to the warming of the world's atmosphere. Our closeness to the South Pole makes the hole in the ozone a serious matter for us. I think that the very clear air puts the dangerous sun rays in direct line with our fair English skins!
The "mainland" States tease us with our cold weather and our smallness. Enjoying it, there are only a half million citizens in an area of land approximately the size of the Netherlands. We are also the second oldest white settlement area of Australia; 1804 saw the first settlers build on the banks of the wide, blue River Derwent that divides Hobart, the capital city, into two. The house, where we live in Hobart, had the first two rooms built in circa 1807. Here we garden in a 1/2 acre ornamental garden sheltering under the branches of several ancient trees. Shading and causing no end of trouble to us [leaves and too much shade] is a 160-year-old English oak tree
The first settlers in Australia were very homesick for their English gardens, and planted English trees, shrubs and flowers which were fine in Tassie's cool temperate climate but were incongruous in the heat of many areas of Australia. It is now unfashionable to plant an English garden - quite rightly, if you don't have the rainfall to sustain them. We grow the plants I like, American, English, Chinese and Japanese but I will grow Australian natives if I they appeal to me and they are suited to our condition. The few losses in our two gardens have been due to too much rain, not too little
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