Ralph Bristow’s Barwite country garden is his canvas in the country
The painter and garden designer brings an artist’s eye to this sprawling and colourful country Victorian oasis. See it for yourself.
Ralph Bristow’s evocative garden at Barwite, near Mansfield in northeast Victoria, is an expression of his dual roles as painter and garden designer. “I paint with plants or paint,” he says. “The process is the same for me.”
The largely perennial garden is surprisingly just four years old – and still a work in progress. Bristow lives on the 2.4ha block on the Broken River with partner Nicky Sanders and her two daughters. The couple’s meeting – over a garden consultation around ten years ago – quickly blossomed to love, and both share a creative studio on the property. Sanders, who works with ceramics, graphic design and fine art photography, had designed and built the straw bale house overlooking a seasonal waterfall and shallow escarpment five years before Bristow arrived. Although she had planted some trees, the rest was tall grass and weeds. Bristow’s garden design utilises the main viewing axis through the house to the river and waterfall, while echoing the curves of the roofline and the wider landscape.
“The house and studio needed to be settled into the landscape,” Bristow explains. “I wanted to create a garden that offers a sense of beauty, detail and depth from almost any place, creating a feeling of being completely immersed in the landscape. It’s that sense of being able to stop and leave everything behind. Being in gardens is a language that seems more fluent to me than the written word.”
The planting design explores complex layering of mainly perennials and grasses with some trees and shrubs in the mix. Mainstay grasses include cultivars of Panicum, Stipa and Calamagrostis whose tall, arching seed heads sway in the breeze, capture the light and maintain sculptural interest into winter. The palette of flowering perennials is rich and varied, including many choice forms of hummingbird mint (Agastache), meadowsweet (Filipendula), coneflower (Echinacea), foxglove (Digitalis), sea holly (Eryngium), red hot pokers (Kniphofia), Rudbeckia and salvias.
“I visualise the colours, flowers, and other attributes of the plants in all seasons,” says Bristow. “The garden changes every day, from the start of spring when it’s like a switch is flicked, turning the garden on. An eruption of buds, flowers, foliage, insects and birds takes hold; the growth and change is dramatic.”
While the peak of flowers is mid to late summer, Bristow’s favourite time is autumn when the garden becomes “softer, quieter, slower” and the colours shift from intense hues to gold, honey, chocolate, yellows and purples. In winter, when -10C is common in the garden’s hollows, “everything is painted in frost and the light refracting off frost crystals is magical.”
Winter is when Bristow makes changes. “I’m always editing the plants,” he says. “I’m already chomping at the bit for winter, so I can start moving plants around.”
Experimenting with plants and planting combinations is a great learning resource for his garden design and plant consultancy business. “It’s also an ongoing work of art that feeds my soul,” he adds. He likens the garden to a symphony. “I love the musical element in terms of the plants being all the different instruments that are being considered artistically. But with music and painting, it’s immediate, whereas with a garden it takes some time for the dialogue to be realised.”
The garden is open March 2-3, with plant sales by Antique Perennials; opengardensvictoria.org.au
Q&A
My row of mature New Zealand Christmas bush (Metrosideros) is in trouble. Many of the highest branches are dying and the problem is spreading.
Paul Brown, Perth
These are hardy plants, especially near the coast, but l’ve observed that in Australia they tend to succumb to borers, especially mature hedges of them in narrow beds where they become stressed over time. The borers are hard to spot, but cut branches will typically reveal many tiny holes. The only “treatment” is to try to boost the overall health of the plants with soil improvement, water and feeding – but often you’re better off replacing them.
I get about five combs of bananas from each stem and then the flowers fail to set fruit despite the bees present. How can I get more fruit?
Les Thean, Perth
The clusters of female flowers located spirally along the long flower stalk develop into bananas without needing pollination (hence bananas are seedless). The cluster of male flowers that hangs at the end, called a bell, should be cut off after the last hand of bananas forms, to improve fruit development. For good harvests, limit your plants to one mature, one medium stem and one sucker; this reduces competition. Bananas are greedy – lack of water results in fewer hands and smaller fruit. Feed plants every two months during spring and summer.
Is it true that laying down a tomato plant on its side will create more roots than if you planted it vertically, as usual?
Franco, by email
Yes, tomatoes can develop rootsfrom their green stems. That’s why tomato seedlings can be planted very deeply, with just the top leaves poking out. They develop roots all along the stem to help them grow larger, stronger root systems. Planting on their sides follows the same principle.
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