Growing a love of Nature thru my Gardens- six so far!

A wander through time, musing on what nature had to teach me in each place I lived, especially through my gardens.

Recently I was revising an article on Herbs for Health that I had presented to our local garden club a while ago so that I could include it as a blog post.

I was alerted to one particular thread through my life’s journey to date – the succession of homes I had lived in, and  the  great diversity of natural environments that surrounded them, especially the gardens that I had created, learned from, neglected or ignored.

Memories of many experiences that have influenced my life and shaped my relationship with the natural world began to stir including discovering the wonders of the mineral kingdom as well as plants.

The idea of giving life to the memories  of these homes and gardens by writing about them began to appeal, It also had the potential for healing. Each place also held its share of uncomfortable personal memories as well.

So here goes!  Lets begin at the beginning –

  The garden and surrounds of the home where I was born in 1934 and spent my childhood was in a small town called Henty, in the southern area of  New South Wales.

  Instalment 1. Earliest Garden Memories

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The next significant period in which I became actively acquainted with nature and the gardening world was during my married life in the 1960’s and ’70s while living first  in Cooma  then Wagga Wagga –

Instalment 2.  My first opportunity to create my own garden as well as a family of four beautiful daughters.

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Instalment no3 .

I return to city life as a single mum with my family in the mid 70’s and  through studying natural therapies, I learnt of the many roles that the plant kingdom plays in natural healing and herbalism – Instalment 3.

 

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the beautiful  Bellinger River and  Dorrigo Mountain which we came to call Mara.

instalment 4.  An account of the Bellingen Years – 16 fruitful years in my ‘Windgarden’ home

By 1982 It was time to return to the bush but this time in the sub-tropics where the environment and plant life turned out to be a  very different one to the one I was familiar with to date

 

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some of the beautiful trees and shrubs in the lower corner of Windgarden no. 2. in Clunes.

1999. Instalment 5.

Migrating further north still into the subtropics to the beautiful little village of Clunes in the Northern Rivers region of NSW.

 

 

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Installment 6.   2005.  Time to finally settle by the ocean in a beautiful quiet home backing onto the side if a hill with a stretch of forest behind and a view of sea and sky in the foreground. – 14 years have sped by quickly and I am grateful for my Haven largely protected  from the dramas of a very busy world!

It has been a rich, challenging and ultimately rewarding journey so far and continues full of promise …………

See the introductory post –   Time to update the story of my gardens

Balcony view from my new home in Ocean Shores of a stormy sunrise over the ocean.