Your Garden – Jude Costello
LOCAL gardening enthusiasts are urged to mark Saturday 29 March on the calendar.
The garden clubs’ presidents have organised a spontaneous Drought Relief Day with eight wonderful gardens being opened for you to enjoy. This is such a vital cause, your generous contribution will make a difference.
Having lived out west at Mungindi I have experienced, both in the garden and in the paddocks, droughts that would make you all shudder.
Over the four decades there were some real doosies, in 2002/03 there was virtually no rain, replicating the same years exactly 100 years before.
During this period I lost nearly 300 roses, not from lack of water as you are probably thinking, but from defoliation by kangaroos and wallabies.
I had never seen kangaroos browse before but starvation is a powerful incentive. Over the two years these roses never had any foliage except for those few my geese sat under on eggs and kept the roos at bay for six weeks each year, they were the only roses in the outside garden to survive.
Except for The Fairy which not even a hungry wallaby would eat.
Being a farmer, the devastation outside the garden fence was soul-destroying, beyond imagination if you have not had that misfortune, so please contribute to this great cause.
Just knowing people care makes a huge difference to farmers’ mental health, but when your income has gone and your costs are sky high, financial help allows farmers to battle on.
The open gardens comprise town and country, large and small, some that have water and some that ran out. You will see plants that have done well in the unseasonal conditions and some that have not. With such short notice and after suffering months of unseasonably hot and dry weather, I would like to thank the owners for their generosity in opening their gardens for us to enjoy.
Please put your hands in your pocket and support our farmers, the life blood of our country. There will be sale items, raffles, refreshments etc at the gardens.
Look out for flyers with directions at your local nursery or the Tourist Information Centre closer to the time.
