My Garden Story
Welcome to "My Garden Story" by Jane Allen
A passionate self-taught gardener living in the Southern Highlands of NSW. Join her for tips and inspiration to help you cultivate and grow a thriving garden!
About Jane Allen
As a child, I had nothing to do with gardening. Neither of my parents was particularly keen, although my father loved roses and was good at pruning them. A rest from the cattle. When I was first married, we had a small house in a terrace in Sydney. In the back yard, there was a patch of grass and a tibouchina, but nothing had to be done to them. When you looked out of the sitting room, there was a small dark passage, with a brick wall, and it was there I took an interest. We used to take day trips to the Blue Mountains, where I would pull ferns up (illegally) from beside the road and take them home. I planted them in pots and put them in the dank and sunless passage, where they loved it. I found some ceramic tiles and stuck them, artistically I thought, on the wall and was very pleased with the effect.
Time went on, my marriage failed and the house, which belonged to my family, was sold. Some thirty years later I rented a cottage in Randwick, where I made hanging baskets of fuchsias for the front veranda and grew a passionfruit vine on a trellis. Neighbours would stop to admire the fuchsias, then I moved again, and nothing happened for a while. In between these brief attempts at gardening, I had a boy to support, and we moved house eight times, always living in rental accommodation.
I worked in a catering business, a smart shop and two art galleries, my son grew up and left home to travel the world, and at the age of fifty I had a sliding door moment when I could have married or gone to the university. I chose to go to Sydney University where I immersed myself in psychology, took two degrees, then left to write a book. Looking back now, I have no regrets. After I was diagnosed with breast cancer, I left Sydney and came to live in the southern highlands in a cottage owned by a friend, with an acre of garden. And that's really where this story begins.
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