A landscape architect: from oak to bonsai

TALK about downsizing. Natasha Morgan has gone from five acres, or about 20,000 square metres, to just over 500 square metres.

It’s a move that’s called on the many skills of this award-winning landscape architect, moving from country to town in what she says was a major tree change, almost like oak to bonsai.

Eighteen months ago, she uprooted from Spargo Creek on the Daylesford-Ballan Road, where she lived with her two daughters for nine years. Home there was a former post office from the 1800s, with trees from that time, including those that provided its name, Oak and Monkey Puzzle. Among the trees at this internationally acclaimed property were superb gardens, such as a picking garden, and kitchen gardens, a berry terrace, with orchards and bush beyond.

Now Natasha is in what she calls her Little Cottage on a Hill. Everything about the garden is re-thought, including an orchard that is vertical. “I love the joy of creating a garden from the soil up,” she says.

This rethinking meant carefully waiting almost a year before also getting stuck into organising workshops in skills ranging from garden design, productive gardens, growing fruit, vegetables, and flowers to mulch-making.

Helped by an Agriculture Victoria grant, her workshops draw people from across the state and even interstate. As we talk, a worker drills away to install a cable in a studio where Natasha will hold workshops in making syrup, such as spiced elderberry and summer berry, that can go on your porridge, as a hot or cold drink, or in a cocktail. (“With a tickle of gin or vodka.”)

Natasha says she was forced into syrup-making by Covid, which also meant home-schooling her girls for 26 weeks.

“The syrups went gangbusters during Covid, and it became super clear that if I had soil, access to water, sun and sky, that’s all l needed. All my worth was wrapped up in what I did.”

A glimpse of this drive comes when Natasha, 47, tells of her mother leaving Yugoslavia with nothing, trekking through snow, and having to swap her wedding ring for milk for her two children. Growing up in Melbourne, a zestful Natasha was let loose in the garden of a friend of her mother when just eight. “It was never precious, and I just gave it a go.”

Later, she undertook a double degree and then lectured. Today, her gardenmaking skills attract passers-by who study her stylish garden, which conforms to council guidelines on nature strips drawn up through talks with advisory groups.

Also of enormous help was the “incredible volcanic chocolate soil”. In went a perennial garden on the west side, with flowers that are beautiful in any season.

On the north, facing Central Springs Road in Daylesford, is a kitchen garden with garlic, cabbages, broccoli and, not so long ago, corn. The boundary features a wicking bed garden, which saves water. Some newly planted roses nod to literature, such as 'Roald Dahl' and 'Jude the Obscure'.

“I’m always thinking about how to make it sustainable. It comes down to finding a sustainable way of life in a world of extremes and uncertainties.

“Work is an extension of the life I’ve created. I don’t see it as work.”

Natasha will talk on the seasons and garden design in 'Conversation and Canapes' at Oak Lane, 66 Piper Street, Kyneton, 5.30-8.30pm on Friday, July 21, and 'The Winter Table - the Art of Tablescaping', at Oak Lane on Monday, July 24, 10am1pm. Bookings: natasha@natashamorgan.com.au

Words: Kevin Childs | Image: Contributed