Michele Shennen - Bayview

10-11 March 2018

My new garden is a crazy challenge. Over half an acre carved out of bush, on a slope, it is a garden that
either keeps me young or ages me quicker, I am not sure!
After my last seaside garden in Bungan Beach and my beautiful three acre holiday ‘Painted Paddocks’
garden in Noosa my secret yearning for chickens has now been fulfilled at ‘wabi-sabi’ in Bayview.
My love of sandstone, sculpture and water features is apparent everywhere.
You enter into a very formal area that then takes you past a stone flanked entertaining area.
Then down to a second deck that acts more like a viewing platform for the gardens beyond, that get wilder.
There are areas of changing types of plant materials…room-like but with the doors all open.
Once you reach the lower pond areas you curve around through my enclosed productive gardens set up with different vege beds. One for each grandchild.
Up the path past a majestic Angophora you view my Chicken pen, the name of the kit being the ‘Taj
Mahal’.
You then can go different ways. To the native area, the kinetic sculpture garden or the pizza oven maple
garden.
There is a lot to discover and to upkeep!!
During my horticultural studies my love of bonsai saw me spend one day a week, for a year, with the man
that introduced bonsai to Australia. The navy man Leonard Webber. He brought his first one in on a frigate.
My collection started during that year, 39 years ago, but it then languished but kept alive at varying sites I
used for plant holding bays.
Last year I brought them home and started work on them again.
I am loving it, but it is more to do.
I am a plant collector, always searching and testing latest hybrids for possible use in my garden designs made easier with my long standing connections forged during my garden centre years.
So I hunt and garden on.
Why ‘wabi-sabi’ for my garden?
It is Japanese describing a thought of transience and simplicity finding beauty in humble imperfection.
This is my garden.