In 1987, Kees Klok, sixty years old and myself, Gay Klok, who had hit the Big Fifty, made a decision that changed our life then and is changing our life now, ten remarkable years later. Since seeing that tiny advertisement in the local newspaper offering "a life time opportunity to purchase a magnificent older style colonial farmhouse" we have built a six-acre ornamental garden with Chinese, American, Japanese and European rare plants intermingling with Australian flora.
The "magnificent farmhouse" was a typical Tasmanian middle-class farmhouse with a bullnose verandah painted shocking pink, an outside bathroom, a kitchen with a wood burning stove, and a verandah room with fishing net hanging in lieu of glass to keep out the birds.
The advertisement continued "This four bedroom large homestead offers you a large apple orchard [sic] and a lifetime supply of firewood, bushland, the most astounding water views you could imagine!"
The large apple orchard consisted of 2,000 apple trees from which Kees, a structural engineer,figured would produce more than one million apples every year. So they do -- and the parrots, blue fairy wrens, blackbirds, jays, silver eyes, rosellas, possums, ducks, peafowl, bandicoots, potoroos and wallabies all love Gay and Kees very much for them when they flock into the orchards every year for a free feed.
The "lifetime supply of wood" is forty acres of semi-rain forest where the Manferns, Dicksonia Antartica grow lushly amongst Stringy Bark Eucalyptus, hundreds of Acacias [wattle] and Callistemons.
In the past ten years, the garden has matured with amazing rapidness. Seedlings, that were one to two feet high babies when planted, are now teenagers twenty to thirty feet in height.
The Home Orchard Garden has become one of the largest cottage gardens around. The ornamental garden, including the home made pond area, covers an area of approximately six acres. These acres may be divided into four main areas, the "Cottage Garden", the " Big Pond Cinderella and the Three Ugly Sisters", the "Mini Birch wood" and the "Home Orchard Garden".
Brown gravel paths, grass walkways and sandstone stepping stones lead the visitor on from one lovely area to another. Himalayan Primulas, all grown from seed that comes from Cluny House Garden in Scotland romp through many borders, relishing the
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