Inside Pepper Cottage - an Open Gardens Event

Baileys: Why do you like open gardens?

Joy: Because I like a sticky-beak at other people's gardens! You learn new things and see how they designed their space, and what plants they've chosen. Also what their soil is like interests me too. 

Mary: Ditto, but I think gardens are like an art gallery. I love coming to see what other people have done with their gardens. It gives me ideas for my own. I love to see the gardens with lots of space like Sandra's, they can do so much with their gardens I get a bit envious.

Baileys:  Sandra, you have done an open garden before? But not in winter?

Sandra: Correct,  This is the first winter.  Last time was in spring so there were about 130 roses flowering whereas this open garden is about the Camellias and Azaleas.  Hopefully we've got the timing right!

Baileys: Walking around the garden now we have seen heaps of plants with lots of buds and a few open flowers. what do you think?

Sandra: We have a couple of weeks, I think we'll be ok. Even if we don't have loads of them out  there'll be enough to be really beautiful, So I think we will be spot on. As long as we don't get a storm that blows them all away!

Baileys: I've seen the photos of the garden renovation. When you came here you put in all the paths and the gazebos. Your husband's been hard at work with building. How many sitting spots have you created in your garden?

Sandra: Oh, I've never counted them out. There would be at least a dozen. The children don't understand why we're always buying more outdoor settings. We like variety and we always sit in the space where we've been working so we can look at what we have achieved. Well actually I'm really the only one who is the gardener. My husband does the hard landscaping.

Baileys: Your friend who sat at one of the gazebos. How many species of bird did he count?

Sandra: He says 80. sounds an awful lot, but he is quite a bird enthusiast. We have red, black and white tail cockatoos. The  black tail cockatoos come to eat all my macadamias. There are so many tiny, tiny, tiny birds. The little red breast and wrens but you never see the blue ones. They're very shy, but then I'm not a bird enthusiast. 

Baileys: What influences you the most when you are selecting plants for a certain areas?

Sandra: To start with it was just what appealed, but now the more plants I have I'm looking for variety, something different. But often it's what is in the sales bin somewhere and you go, well, I don't have that. 

Joy: Gardening is not a cheap hobby, between plants, fertiliser mulch etc.  I love how you have created these little scenes in your garden. The garden is so well designed: high plants, medium plants and low plants. In my garden I forget to look how high the plants are going to grow and I plonk it in the garden and suddenly you've got this three meter high plant right in the front.  It's an easy mistake to make

Baileys: Your garden's got mini rooms. How would you describe them?

Sandra: We have the name Pepper Cottage due to the two very old pepper trees planted by the original owners. We named the other parts of the garden for ourselves so we know what areas we are talking about. We have the white gazebo or Camellia garden, the Bali garden, the formal garden, the fairy garden, the orchard and the secret garden.  Last spring I got excited about the Bearded iris when I went to an open garden in Mundaring so I have a lot of new babies of Bearded iris coming this year. I'm calling that the Iris walk. But we'll have to see how they take off.