Merry Garth Garden

merry garth is a 2.5 hectare garden at mount wilson in the blue mountains and it's the creation of keith and libby raines. for nearly 30 years they've developed their property into a serene place of wonder.

the natural vegetation, when the couple moved to the property, was mostly rainforest including sassafrass and coachwood, and two types of tree ferns and giant banksia trees. libby and keith have blended these with shrubs that they have planted to beautiful effect.

the cyclamen hederifolium seed themselves and make a groundcover, and they come from places like northern italy, up in the mountains. and the campanula has blue flowers, it's very good in the shade, and it forms a great, natural, green mulch.

libby says: ?we don't water the garden much and we don't really fertilise. we just fertilise the gross feeders, like peonies and vegetables.?

merry garth garden is an oasis located in a desert of sandstone, which forms skeletal soils that are very hard to establish gardens. but basalt, which is a volcanic rock, weathers to form a rich, well-structured soil so that you can grow just about anything on it. that, combined with the cool climate of mount wilson, means that you can grow plants that won't grow anywhere else near sydney.

the nerines do well in the garden and love the soil and the climate. they come in many colours including white, pink, salmon, red and soft orange tones.

the natural forest is beautifully complemented by the many mature tree plantings, such as a magnificent grove of beech trees. such plantings are used to divide the garden into a series of rooms which each add their own individual touch of beauty.

one of the rooms is the rock garden. it features dwarf conifers, sun-loving daphne species, alpine perennials and rare bulbs. libby says that many of the plants in the rock garden like the sun. ?many of these plants are rounded or have a nice form. they're often very compact and dense, and bulbs are planted in between,? she says.

a rare plant is the rimu pine dacrydium cupressinum from new zealand. it's often regarded as one of the most beautiful conifers in the world, because it's so very graceful.

another favourite is the paperbark maple or acer griseum from china with its lovely orange bark, that's very flaky. ?but it has very good autumn colour - it's a lovely orange in the autumn,? libby says.

and there are some wonderful rare climbers, like the rhodochiton atrosanguineum. the flowers are like little bells, and it has a seed that grows in the middle.

there is also a rare conifer called microstrobus fitzgeraldii which comes from the wentworth falls and katoomba falls area and grows under the falls, in the permanent spray. libby says it does well in the garden.

the lovely thing about merry garth is the way that the indigenous vegetation has been used to create a beautiful garden, which is not a bush garden. the use of natural stone and the lovely rainforest species creates a garden which is totally in harmony with the blue mountains landscape, yet is based on exotic plants.

libby says the garden keeps them busy. but they get time to enjoy it too. ?we enjoy it with our visitors, and a lot of our visitors tell us that if heaven was like this they wouldn?t mind going there, which is always nice,? she says.

further information:

merry garth is open as part of australia's open garden scheme.

www.opengarden.org.au