SEASON 2 EPISODE #1: COUNTRY GARDENS WITH SAM ARMYTAGE

Charlie: I am Charlie Albone and welcome to episode one of season two of that’s how we grow in partnership with Stihl garden power tools. Yes. Just like your favourite annual, we are back for a second season. Thank you for all your positive feedback and reviews on our first season, which is actually a pilot season, not just here in Australia but globally, and it was so well received that we simply had to come back to continue discussing gardening with all of you and some of our incredible guests. Speaking of our line-up for this season, it is very exciting, one of which I’m very excited to start chatting with in just a moment.

Charlie: She is, of course, Australia’s own – Samantha Armytage. Australia knows Sam for her time hosting Sunrise and many other programs. But a lot don’t know, she’s just gone through a tree change and is trying her luck with an Australian native garden. A native country garden brings with it some beautiful, almost romantic thoughts, for a garden designer like me. You’ve got so many opportunities to design a garden just for you. Space and access is rarely restricted, leaving the imagination to run wild. I can smell the fresh country as I talk about it.

Charlie: I can see where my veggie plot is, where I plant my favourite trees, and so much more. But there can be challenges a country gardener must face that people in the city wouldn’t consider. There’s bushfires, a lack of water, and a range of animals that want to come in and feed on your garden, from cattle, horses, hungry rabbits and even wombats. I can’t wait to discuss Sam’s beautiful garden and how she loves to get outside and embrace her country surrounds.

Charlie: Samantha Armytage. Welcome to That’s How We Grow. I have to ask you straight off the bat, are you a morning person still or no longer?

Samantha Armytage: Well, good morning, Charlie. And I guess I am still a morning person, but.
Not a 3 a.m. person. Thank God.

Charlie: That would have been hideous.

Samantha Armytage: Yeah, it was. It was interesting because as soon as I left sunrise and I moved to the country, I went straight back to normal sleep. I can really sleep in now till six or even seven, so that’s good.

Charlie: That would be bliss. I’ve got two young boys sleeping until seven would be a real treat.

Samantha Armytage: And after all those years of getting out of bed at three a.m., you know, everyone sort of warned me to do terrible things to body clock, but I just bounce straight back to normal ,but I miss working, and being productive. But I’m doing a bit of horse racing, I’m doing Farmer Wants a Wife, so I’m doing things I really love, it’s a fun time in my life.

Charlie: Oh, that’s good. And when you stepped out of Sunrise, you moved out to the country, is that right? Do they go hand in hand? So tell me a bit about that move.

Samantha Armytage: Well, I was always the country girl at heart, and I spent my whole career because I had to in Sydney, because, you know, when you’re a television journalist, you have to be in the city, you can’t do that from home. So I had spent over 20 years, you know, I’d been to boarding school in Sydney, I’d been to university in Bathurst, can’t come back to the country for that. And then I had to be in Sydney and I used to do all these interviews as my star rose and people became interested and I’d always sort of talk about going back to the country one day and I didn’t know how that was going to work for me, but I knew I needed to do that and I needed to have it be able to put my hands in the soil.

Samantha Armytage: It’s very important to me for my health and happiness that I connect with the earth and that I have get my hands dirty and that I have a garden. And so then finally, you know, I met Rich and he’s the farmer and who’s living in the country. And then I decided to leave Sunrise and just all sort of work together. So I, I moved into his. But we’re on 100 acres near Bowral, right, with horses and dogs and lots of kangaroos. Really big kangaroo population out here.

Charlie: Yeah there is.

Samantha Armytage: Huge wombat population, there’s a lot of a lot of native animals and probably a little bit of control needed. But it’s, it’s wonderful for me and we’ll get into it. But I have I have a different sort of garden now that I’ve married my husband, moved into his house. And can I just tell you, I have to just do a little shout out to you, a little fan -girl thing, which is very big. I’m a very big fan of you and what you do in the garden. Richard is a very big fan of Stihl.

Charlie: Is he? Good man!

Samantha Armytage: And yes, I just have to add this in here. He, all of his gear, the whippersnipper that I refuse to use.

Samantha Armytage: Yes. And all of the garden equipment is Stihl and I love all the battery stuff. It’s so bright these days because I love the leaf blower. I don’t even use a broom anymore.

Charlie: So he’s moved to battery because you find on a on a larger property, some people are still stuck on petrol powered stuff, but I think battery is the way to go for sure.

Samantha Armytage: No, I think battery is the way to go too. And if you could have one on the charger, money in the machine and because we have the stables as well. So you’ve got some really heavy duty blowing to do with a leaf blower down there. And so he bought this this big Stihl one that I really love, too, now.

Charlie: Yeah. It’s addictive, isn’t it?

Samantha Armytage: It is. It is. And literally, I mean, I remember as a kid just watching Mum with the broom on the verandah every day, you know. And now I just think, oh my God, here you came with a broom.

Charlie: So what was your garden like in the city compared to your garden now?

Samantha Armytage: Well, my city garden was very, very minimal. I was living in a house in North Bondi and I did the best I could with I was on that sandstone plateau under the cliff in the north of north. Not so you couldn’t really grow much. And when I inspected it had Astroturf in the backyard, nothing.

Samantha Armytage: Oh, God. But, you know, it was sense. You know, there was nothing I was really going to grow to grow out there. So I did little things that you can do in the city, like I did pots. I did a lily pilly hedge along the front fence, mainly for privacy.
But the even doing that, you know, even watering something like that, having, you know, hedging that, having it there, keeping it green, keeping the bugs off. I just love pottering. But it was very low compared to some of the gardens you’ve done. It was very low maintenance.

Charlie: Well, it’s so difficult to grow in Bondi because you’ve got the salt here, you’ve got terrible soil on it and it’s really small. So your plants are stressed out and you’re constantly battling stuff. So it’s not ideal for a gardener, a great place to live, but not ideal for a gardener.
Did you look after that place?

Samantha Armytage: Yes. Yes. Because I kind of enjoyed it. I mean, I used to think I should get someone in to do this professionally, but I just never did because I did like doing it.

But, you know, it was I think the garden. You have sort of suits who you are at the time. You know, as a young, single career girl, I didn’t have a lot of time and I’d grown up on the Monaro down in the Snowy Mountains with my mother was the most brilliant gardener. I’ve inherited it from her, although she was a lot better than me and a lot more knowledgeable. But I’d grown up with your love, these English gardens, we just, you know, we lived at a bolero station at Adaminaby for 25 years and we had a very English garden, which I now look back on and I think about the water that was poured into the English garden, on the monaro, which is one of the harshest regions in the country. And then mom and dad, after.

25 years, moved to the Riverina to a property up past Wagga and again mum cultivated an English garden, so it was all roses and lavender and you know, ironically now I’ve married a man, the surname Lavender, but I was…

Charlie: Going to mention that. But you’ve brought it up!

Samantha Armytage: Isn’t it perfect. My old mate Paul Bangay sent me a message when he heard we’d got married. He’s like, I love this bloke. I haven’t met him, but I love him. But you know, it was all gardenias and camellias and petunias and geraniums in pots. It was all colour. It was beautiful, you know. Mum had a row of mop top rubinias out on the back fence line, sort of hiding the ugly bits of the paddock and, you know, clumps of silver birches and crab apples and boxes hedges for goodness sake, on the Riverina, which…Can you imagine the water

Charlie: It’s a funny thing us gardeners do you know when you really want something, you just try and make it grow like I love Japanese, peonies can’t grow them, but every year I try it.
Well, this year might be different.

Samantha Armytage: Yeah, yeah, I know I will. And that’s the thing about gardeners is there’s always hope. And I get. The guilt when I have to throw something out or I say it’s dead or it hasn’t worked. And I’m looking out the window right now, some pots that I’ve planted here near a barrel of bulbs that I’m just hoping for a bit of colour in spring and they’re not looking terribly healthy.

Charlie: So it’s been so wet and oh well, you know if you’ve got the desire for it, you do, you learn and, and you only learn through killing things.

Samantha Armytage: Thanks Charlie!

Charlie: Great comment. You do. I’ve killed plenty of things. Don’t, don’t feel bad.

Samantha Armytage: Have you? Because I do. I do worry about this and I think how do I be better at this and pots are hard because you we’ve had so as you said we’ve had so much rain down here.

Charlie: Yes. Yeah. With pots. If it’s raining as much as it has been, you really need to get the drainage right. So you need to be out to get the water out of the pots. Otherwise they just go all stagnant and horrible and smelly.

Samantha Armytage: Great. Well, that’s what I’ve got. Stagnant instead. Oh good.

Charlie: Draw some holes in the bottom. You’ll be okay.

Samantha Armytage: I’ll get Richard onto that.

Charlie: So you moved from a small place in Bondi to a hundred acres. What’s the garden like on 100 acres? Obviously it’s not 100 acres of garden, but.

Samantha Armytage: Gosh, yeah. No, it’s. Well, Rich. My husband breeds horses, so we’ve got horses in the paddock. So it’s a very… We are the western side of Bowral. So again, here’s me and you’re going to love all of this because I just think in a former life I was English, you know, I love I love the Southern Highlands for the English Gardens and Green. And I’ve met and married this man who lives on the western side who, it’s pretty harsh up here. We’re on the ridge line and it’s… it’s it was a this ridge was created, however, many million years ago by a volcanic eruption. So if you dig sort of several inches under the ground anywhere here, it’s just rock.

Samantha Armytage: Yeah. So it’s hard land and it’s very native Australia. It’s completely not what you think of Bowral. And I’ve moved into his home and, which he has created beautifully, but he loves native gardens.

Charlie: Right. But you say that with some sort of reservation in your voice.

Samantha Armytage: Reservation? Trepidation. Yeah, it’s taken me a long time. You know, when you love the man, you’ve got to love the garden. Yeah, but I didn’t know anything about natives, and I find them quite… I’d never really been a huge fan. I never found them to be terribly attractive and given, you know, knowing what I grew up with. And so Richard sort of created a house within a landscape, he calls it, and a parklands. So it’s mainly plantings around, I suppose we have a couple of acres of house…Well, what you would say was a yard and a garden, but it’s not fenced. It’s very sort of a ha-ha going off the edge of the ridgeline into the bush. And just plantings around the place of snow gums, but, you know, old man banksia, hardened burgia clumps. So it’s very… Well, I have talked him into some white cedars.

Charlie: Okay.

Samantha Armytage: Around the place. Yeah. Because I didn’t know that they were native. I’ve always loved white cedars. And then I finally found out there were native! Come on, Rich! Let’s do it. You’ll love it. It’s native. And so it’s look, it’s taken me a long time, and there’s still a lot I don’t understand about native flowers. And they’re so clever. It’s quite extraordinary to get to know them, how they how they regenerate themselves, how the birds react. And it’s been quite amazing.

Charlie: It’s interesting, isn’t it? Because I’m like you, I guess I’m used to an English style garden and that’s what I get attracted to. And natives is a completely different look. And I think you only really appreciate them when you spend some time with them, when you see the flowers, when you see how the birds interact with them. When they do all those amazing things and they can be fantastic. And I love the idea that you’ve got a house in the landscape. That’s a great way to look at a large scale garden because a large scale garden could be anything you want it to be. But to really have it settled into the landscape would be really lovely. I’ll have to come and visit.

Samantha Armytage: You’re welcome. You and Juliet welcome any time. And you boys would love it because there’s a hundred acres to run around and it’s terrific here because we have friends down from Sydney. We just go down into the paddock and have a bonfire and have a glass of red. It’s a really lovely lifestyle.

Samantha Armytage: And this is where I went when I was invited on your podcast. I was jumped at it because I want to pick your brains, I want to try and merge… It’s the way of the future in this country. We can’t have English gardens in a country that I know we’re in the middle of La Nina…But you know, normally we have no water.

Samantha Armytage: So we just can’t do English gardens the way we have, so we have to embrace natives. But I like the idea of a formal garden. Yeah. So I want to try and work out a way that you can have native gardening, but in a formal sort of, you know, I love avenues of trees. Yes. HEDGES Yes. And there’s got to be a way to do that.

Charlie: Well, look, I don’t think it needs to be strictly native, so it just needs to be drought resistant. So hedging, you could use something like chew cream, which is a silver leaf foliage and makes a fantastic hedge that will give you a lovely, you know, and consistent throughout because I think that’s really important avenues of trees. You do need to pick sort of your native trees and pick them for shape. But there’s so many that are being developed for exactly what you’re talking about. If you think of the water gum tree standing up this, there’s a variety called luscious, which is white stems, white trunk, black stems, really glossy leaves in a very conical shape.

Charlie: So it’s perfect for that sort of thing.

Samantha Armytage: Lovely. Yeah. I had we have a terrific nursery done. He’s called Waurinpindi. Yes, he prunes. I guess pruning is the word, but he literally does it with the chainsaw, with the country girl, and he loves his white cedars.

He pulls them right back. So each year they sort of almost bawl. Yeah. And I think, you know, almost like a topiary and I think cool is I love people that think like this that says take what things could be and turn it on its head and make it a bit a bit different and a bit structured, you know.

Charlie: Just have a bit of fun with it. Yeah. Yeah. Have you been to Red Cow in the Southern Highlands?

Samantha Armytage: No, I’ve, I’ve read about it but I haven’t been there.

Charlie: It’s an amazing garden.

Samantha Armytage: I’m writing all this down because I, I do find we have a distinct lack of good nurseries down here.

Charlie: You know? Well, I think this the nursery trade has really suffered throughout COVID because they thought they got rid of a lot of their staff thinking, you know, doom and gloom. But then everybody got into gardening. Everyone really got their hands dirty and went and bought all the stock and completely emptied all the nurseries and they just couldn’t keep up. So it’s something which is really suffering in business and, you know, supply and demand isn’t there. But finally, I think they’re starting to catch up. So thank goodness all the gardeners will get their plants.

Samantha Armytage: I know. Well, at times like everything these days, you go shopping for something, pots or whatever, you know, they look at you desperately. And say supply chain issues, we can’t get these in. But yeah, you know, it’s frustrating and it is it’s interesting to see the different way that people are changing how they live, you know, the boom in the regions and not just out. I mean, we’re basically an extension of Sydney down here. But you know, I know dead out at Wagga Wagga is just every time you visit it’s there’s another suburb on the outskirts. It’s extraordinary.

Charlie: Yeah. It’s nice the way you say you use your garden. It’s, it is a lifestyle change isn’t it. Just being able to go down to the fire pit, have a fire, be drawn out into nature, and connect with nature. That must be really lovely compared to a tiny place in Bondi.

Samantha Armytage: Oh, it’s just, it just at the risk of sounding like an idiot, it just makes my heart sing to be able to walk outside the door. It’s so important to me to be able to potter around and just create. And I’ve had I’ve had fun with this because, you know, this is where I live now. So you make you know, you make the most of it. But I’ve sort of introduced this idea to Richard that these areas of our garden, which was sort of just like a corner of the paddock that no one went to, there is a beautiful tree there or something, but there’s no reason to go there. So I’ve put a little garden seat in there under that gum tree that looks out over there and we sit down there and have a gin and tonic and Rich said to me one day last summer, Oh, my God, you know, I would never have come and sat down here before. I was like, Rich, if you know, build it, they will come. If you put the chairs in the garden or if you put a swimming pool in a certain area, people will go and use that area. It’s amazing how people…Yeah.

Charlie: People enjoy being outside a lot in Europe. Having a look at the way they design their gardens and putting their alfresco areas away from the house. You know, in Australia we tend to people are all about indoor outdoor flow and having the kitchen, outdoor kitchen right by the back door. But if you put it at the back of the garden, it transforms the way you use the space. You have to travel through the garden together and you will. And it just means you use the space. And that doesn’t matter how big your garden is. People, like you said, you build it and people will come.

Samantha Armytage: Well, for instance, mum and Dad’s property out Anthony on the Narrandera road, there was one particularly sort of ugly back corner and we never there was an old cubby house that, you know, the previous owners had put down there, but none of us ever went and we were too old for that by that point. And it was full of snakes.

Samantha Armytage: And I mean, you wouldn’t have gone into this cubby house anyway. And see, that’s the other thing with snakes. The biggest turnoff to country living is the snakes. But Mum put a swimming pool down in that back corner and then we’d all just go down and take a drink down and lie down there. And you know, even mum was the one that sort of drew my attention to this. She was like, you know, we would never have come and sat down here if it wasn’t for the swimming pool.

Samantha Armytage: And we were on the Murrumbidgee River. So we had a big-

Charlie: Swimming pool.

Samantha Armytage: We had a water view of sorts. Yeah. The property was called Como and Mum used to call it Lake Como when it flooded with water, flooding right now but some but you know, yeah build it and that will come. So I love doing that. I love using the garden, I love being in the garden, I love being productive. And then if the weather’s right, which often isn’t down here, but you know, I love taking a book out there or a magazine or on the phone out there.

Charlie: It’s the best place to relax. Get some sun on you. It’s fantastic. Do you get your love of gardening from your mum, you think?

Samantha Armytage: Yes. Well, my dad was a farmer, so he loved the earth. And I mean, he made his living from. From nature and the earth. But Mum had the absolute knowledge. I mean Mum was one, she was, I mean she wasn’t like you because she wasn’t a professional, but she could tell you the names of them and the Latin names of everything. And I used to think, how does she know this extraordinary knowledge? And I guess it’s like country cooks, you know, they can make, you know, a dinner party out of the pantry. Yes. Country. Country gardeners are the same.

Samantha Armytage: You just sort of teach yourself, you know, what you love, I guess, over many trials and droughts and floods and in I mean, insects are we forget about how much damage insects can do, particularly off the back of the wet weather we’ve had. The insects are just insane at the well not they’ll come back in some place but the destruction you know, I sort of still have that country girl thing in me that if I step outside and I see a grasshopper on the on the, you know back verandah, I think, oh, god, it’s a plague. You know, the garden would be devastated. You know, the fear that these insects put in you is terrifying.

Samantha Armytage: But yes, definitely from mum. Mum was absolutely brilliant at this.

Charlie: Yes, I get my love of gardening from my mum as well. She recently when she’s been out from England, she just went just went home over the last couple of days. So it’s been so nice to be out in the garden with her. You know, you get a lot from that being outside with loved ones.

Samantha Armytage: It’s nice, it’s lovely to pass it down through generations and get their experience. What does she think of Australian gardens?

Charlie: She thinks they’re very hot. She gets very hot and red faced. She really does. She’s starting to appreciate the more she loves all types of gardens, which is good. And I teach her because I pruning is atrocious. She turns all my lovely round, perfectly rounded sculpted boxes, bowls into cubes. So she’s not allowed there’s not allowed to prune anymore.

Samantha Armytage: At least she’s having a go. But this is you know, we Rich and I recently went to London for a couple of weeks. My sister lives over there just for a holiday and just to be back in, just to travel again, but to be back in London particularly. And we went out to the country, to the races as well. But the parks in London.

Samantha Armytage: And again, my heart just sings. You know, I just walk through, you know, Green Park and it was just Hyde Park. They just do parkland very well the English. We could learn a lot from them.

Charlie: I think that comes from the age of the trees that are in the parks. You know, they’ve got these amazing old trees. And I think that’s what you get from a country property as well. The maturity, which is, which is really lovely. You don’t get the verdant green in in Australia but that’s okay.

Samantha Armytage: It’s a particular shade of green but trees. Funny you say. I haven’t mentioned trees yet. I adore trees and we have some spectacular gums on our place here. And it’s I mean, Rich who’s, you know, a bit old. The man was a farmer for a long time and he’s very, very knowledgeable about… he’s big on pasture, pasture regeneration and yeah, creating a good animal. Obviously, we have horses. So he wants to, you know, have his grass is as good as he can have them because then you save on hay costs.

Samantha Armytage: But I…When I moved in here, I’d sort of we’d walk around together and I’d say, Isn’t that a spectacular tree? And he’d go, I don’t know if it’s a boy thing, you know, go, Oh yeah, I’ve never noticed that one before that it’s just, look at it, it’s magic. It’s really majestic, the gums on this place.

Charlie: And you know what? They’re like living sculptures. And I think sometimes if you live with something for too long or you only start to appreciate something later in life, you can forget about them. They can just be a backdrop, so.

Samantha Armytage: Well, they’re just there.

Charlie: Yeah. Yeah. But do you light them up at night?

Samantha Armytage: We have one. I guess there’s one near the house that I’m just because we’ve had so much rain down here and now we’re having these enormous winds in from the south that we can we can tell when it’s snowing in the mountains from the wind. We get here and I am bit worried we might lose a few because the ground so wet. But there’s one near the house that is spectacular that I have lit up. I’m very capable, Charlie.

Samantha Armytage: I really do get out and have a go. I guess I’ll, I’ll ask Rich to do things for me around the garden and the house. And, you know, if I ask him 20 times and it’s still not done, then I just do it myself, you know?

Charlie: So do you do a lot of the maintenance around the property in the garden? Or are you a delegator.

Samantha Armytage: Well, a bit of both, but I, I…I wouldn’t say I mean, I will, I draw the line. I’m going to confess this to you. I draw the line at whipper-snappering. When Rich and I first got married, I said, just, you just need to know I will love and not obey and honour, but I will not do the whippersnapper thing. I just won’t do that. But I do the mowing. Yeah. And I love pottering in my garden and for my birthday Richard made me some beautiful… He’s got these stringy bark timbers piled up and he made me some vegetable garden boxes.

Samantha Armytage: And, you know, I’m lucky that he’s got the equipment, he’s got a bobcat and stuff so he can put the soil in. So in that regard, I delegate, but I’m very capable. I move pots around, I get out there and have.

Charlie: Have a go. Yeah. Good. So what are you into the pruning and that sort of stuff or is it more secateurs and both.

Samantha Armytage: Both. I love… I love pruning because I’m a Virgo. I’m an earthy girl. I love to get in and get it. I love to create order out of chaos. That’s why I need to be in the garden, because I’m such a Virgo. So, yes, I love pruning. And actually, funnily enough, speaking of mothers, mum, these things that your mother hands down to you that at the time you sort of think, Oh, Mama, I don’t care. I’m a career girl. Like, you know. At least taught me how to prune Rose and thank God she did because now she’s got and I every time I now do Dad’s for him and I.

Charlie: Do mine here and I think I’m quite a good pruner of roses and Rich’s created some under my direction, some hedges at the front gate. And I think they’re legitimate.

Samantha Armytage: And we’re trying to grow those into a hedge. So, you know, I mean, you could give me advice on this, actually, if I like to print, because then I think you grow faster.

Charlie: Well pruning promotes growth. So you have to wait till they finish flowering and then chop them back by about a third. So be really hard with them. I know they’ll push up really densely and you get a really good display and that will give you a quick hedge. Okay. So you can be quite harsh to them.

Samantha Armytage: Yeah, terrific. But it’s scary, isn’t it, when you don’t really know what you’re doing to prune something by third, you think, Oh my God, am I going to kill it?

Charlie: Yeah. As a rule of thumb, most things can be shot back by about a third without doing any damage.

Samantha Armytage: Wow. So we’re still getting frosts. We’ve had a funny winter because it’s been numb. I was just thinking the other day it’s been quite mild. But then we’ve had, I reckon we have a frost a couple of times a week, so it’s pretty cold here.

Charlie: It’s a different type of gardening when you’re introducing frost, especially when you’re doing planting and things like that. So when you’re planting, you really need to ensure when you put the plants in the ground that you can pack the soil around the root bowl and not compact it, but make sure the soil is in contact with the root ball because any air pockets will fill water and turn to frost and that can kill a plant pretty quickly. So I wouldn’t be planting anything until middle of spring just to make sure the last frost has gone.

Samantha Armytage: Yep. Okay. And we’re quite late to it. It’s just totally different from Sydney and every… I mean it goes without saying that every area you, you live in is going to be different. But I remember my childhood in the Adaminaby where, you know, our spring would start in about December.

Samantha Armytage: And they didn’t go for about two weeks, you know, like it was just sort of yeah. So I sort of still have that mentality.
I mean, the Southern Highlands is not far behind that, but it’s…You know, I go to Sydney all the time for work and it could be ten degrees warmer up there. Yeah. And it’s an hour up the road.

Charlie: I know.

Samantha Armytage: It’s crazy.

Charlie: I’ve got a place an hour and a half north of Sydney and the temperature change is crazy. We still get frost, but it’s so much warmer up there so we can grow so much more.

Samantha Armytage: It’s great. We’ve had so much rain over the last sort of 12 to 18 months that and the heat has still been there. So I said to Richard, the other day. You know, I can see before my eyes. Young trees that have grown several feet, you know, in the last summer. It was extraordinary.

Charlie: Well, this spring is going to be ballistic growth, really, because you’ve had all that weather and it’s going to be nice that all that rain and we’ve got all the heat coming. So stuff is going to going to take off. You know, it’s going to catch a lot of people off guard, I think. So you need to be prepped and ready to go with all your maintenance. But have you got any advice for those people that have done a tree change like yourself because so many have after the pandemic. Hmm. Or thinking about it still.

Samantha Armytage: And Charlie, interesting you’re out because I’ve just heading back into television and I’m helping out on Farmer Wants A Wife some helping all these young mainly young women who are thinking about moving to the country for love. Yeah, like I sort of did.

Samantha Armytage: And my advice, I think country people are very self-contained and luckily I grew up with this. So to come back to it was natural and wonderful for me. But you do have to be self-contained. You really, I think gardeners, the special people, because they’re quite happy with their own company. Yes. And they’re quite happy in nature. So I think there has to be connection to nature. You have to expect that, you know, the Wi-Fi is not great. You can’t order Uber eats. It’s going to be a harsh harshness. That’s probably too harsh a word. But it is… it’s an… it’s not as cushy as the city, really. And the peace and quiet is wonderful, but sometimes, you know, can be can be deafening.

Well, yes, sometimes you crave the noise. So if you can balance it a bit. But honestly, I mean…It’s just such a wonderful lifestyle. And I’m not even talking like really out of town like us. I mean, even from around yoga for young families, just to be even to be able to have, you know, a thousand square meters on a block in Bogota is wonderful. It’s a great place to raise children. It’s great. Look, I look at Banjo, the Labrador, and if I put you in the car to go back to Sydney.

Samantha Armytage: You can see his face, like nooo I don’t want to go back. He just loves that. He will just go out and sniff around chasing kangaroo it, you know. Yeah. So it’s just a wonderful place to be.

Charlie: You mentioned you had a lot of kangaroos. How do you keep the animals and the horses, for that matter, out of the house garden?

Samantha Armytage: Well, we well, the horses the horses we can keep out, which is just done a whole lot of fencing here because he’s got broodmare. So he’s got foals being born. I mean, spring here is spectacular, not just for the growth. We have baby foals. It’s just life.

Charlie: Everywhere.

Samantha Armytage: Oh, it’s wonderful. And as a September baby, I love spring. But the horses are okay. We, the native animals. I mean, there just is no way. You just can’t keep them out. So you’ve got to work with them or around them.

Samantha Armytage: And they do a lot of actually I find I think it’s I think we have a couple of hares in our garden and they do the most they’ve stripped the white cedars. Yes. This winter. And that’s pretty devastating. And I mean, we have lots of tree guards up here, but you just you do the best you can.

Charlie: Yeah, absolutely. And hares are so difficult to keep out with larger animals. You can keep them out with spiky plants. Berberis etc. for stuff like that will keep them out, but hares will still get through that. And they’re after that fresh new growth, which is devastating. If it gets taken out of the plant, you can try things like chilli and garlic spray, but on a large scale property you’ll be soaking everything and chili and garlic every couple of days, especially with the rain we’ve had.

Samantha Armytage: Yeah. Can you imagine! I have more time on my hands these days, but I don’t know if I have that much time. But it is. I mean, look, you would know this gardening could be heartbreaking. You know, you can literally come out one morning and think, oh, my God. What happened here overnight?

Charlie: Yeah.

Samantha Armytage: And I’ve always blamed the kangaroos. And it was Rich that said, I think this is a hare, like I just don’t think a kangaroo would strip something. And then you’ve got the wombat issue. We have a lot of wombats down here and big ones. Yes. And they will just plough, they’ll snap things. You know, you can tell where the damage come from because that will just snap it off because they’ve walked over the top of it.

Charlie: Yeah. They don’t care. They don’t care if it looks nice, they just walk through it. They’re after the grass. They’re like the Labrador. They’ll just barge through it. But…But a hare will strip things. The kangaroos look, I don’t know. I was talking to some friends who live further out west and they’ve got a real deer issue. And we have I mean, I’ve never seen so many kangaroos in my life as I have here. And yeah. And lately and I don’t know what the answer is, but I do think the population is. Out of control, dare I say it? Yes. And big, even Rich said it the other day. Big kangaroos, like I’ve never say. We had a huge buck who came in riding on the veranda, and he would have been taller than Richard.

Samantha Armytage: He was over six foot. Wow. And massive, like big across the chest. Like this. Scary when. Yeah.

Charlie: Yeah, they are.

Samantha Armytage: And dangerous with dogs, you know. And he was actually… it was sad. He came in here to die. He died on our veranda, so he was sick. But you sort of think, gosh, if he was if he was well…

Charlie: Yeah, he could eat the whole garden!

Samantha Armytage: Scary. I know. And he could, you know, he literally ripped the Labrador apart. So I don’t know what the answer is, but it’s a big population. I do think it’s bigger than I’ve ever seen in my lifetime.

Charlie: Do you have you mentioned you had a Ha Ha wall? Do you find that you find that effective? Is that for the horses or for the kangaroos?

Samantha Armytage: Well, that’s because we’re on the top of the ridgeline, Richard and I love Ha Has. I think it was Richard’s, I think Richard accidentally created that because when I arrived I know I was like, Oh, I love Ha Has. And he’s like, what? But because we’re on the ridge line, it just makes sense not to put a fence. And now fencing down here is Southern highlands. You know, its post and rail and yes. Where the foals are, it’s horse, horse wire. But around the garden we really don’t have a fence. So you could just tell where the garden begins and ends by where the mowing is. Yes. And so that just runs to the edge. And I mean the Virgo in me, I’d like to go out I would like Richard to go out because I won’t use the whipper snipper and just sort of trim it a bit.

But he loves it. He really. Yeah. This is where we don’t always see eye to eye. That wild, raw, untamed native Australian look. And I like things to be a bit more neat and tidy.

Charlie: And but you can, you can have the neat and tidy around the house and then it bleeds out into the natural landscape. Is that sort of a compromise?

Samantha Armytage: You’re sort of… Yeah, well, that’s sort of the compromise. Yeah. Marriage is all about compromise, right, Charlie?

Charlie: Absolutely.

Samantha Armytage: But look, I love a Ha Ha. When I was growing up at the inn near Adaminaby, we had one in the garden and it was to keep the sheep out. So that was a practical one. And that was borrowed from England that, you know, Mum would have created, Mum would have asked Dad to create that. So that was practical. But this one here is sort of just a necessity.
Yeah, but there are lovely way to like taking the view and have it uninterrupted, oh, it’s gorgeous. It’s a really great way to show you, you don’t want your friends to come and have a party and then fall.

Charlie: Not know where they are, where have they gone?

Samantha Armytage: And I know we don’t want anyone falling down the cliff here, but, you know, as long as if they’re well, this or you know, it’s such a great concept. There’s so many cool design. Like, this is what I love about gardening. It’s such an outlet for creativity. There’s so many cool ideas.

Charlie: Yeah. And having a large property, you can kind of try a bit of everything as well, which is nice.

Samantha Armytage: And I have to say, I mean, I, you know, I live here in the Australian bush, but I do I look at the Chelsea Garden show and I look at what you do all the time and you know, and you guys and better homes and gardens. And I think, oh, I love that. I love Graham Ross. I listen to all his stuff.

Charlie: Pretty good. He is amazing. He’s got a photographic memory, so he remembers every single plant he’s looked at. So he told me a tape of he used to take pictures of plants and when he would take the picture, he would repeat the name out loud. And he remembers every single plant and he’s like, unbelievable.

Samantha Armytage: It’s an extraordinary. Yeah, he’s like the Bruce McAvaney of gardening.

Charlie: Absolutely. He is. He really is. He’s such a legend. He does so much for the industry. He’s amazing.

Samantha Armytage: Yeah, brilliant. But I but honestly, I’ve watched your Chelsea. I mean, I’ve never been to Chelsea Garden Expo and it’s on my bucket list, it is really. Yes, I’d love to be there for that. We missed it this year, but maybe next year.

Charlie: Yeah, it’s the first social event of the calendar in London. We’re going to try and go back next year. So I mean, it’s such an amazing place just to be one where you’re there for three weeks building this thing that stands up for five days. But to be around all these people that are like minded and the creativity is it’s really incredible. Yeah, yeah. You have to go.

Samantha Armytage: It’s very special. I know it’s on my bucket list and I admire you for, you know, being part of that because that is quite a feather in the cap.

Charlie: Yeah. I didn’t realise what I was getting into to be honest. I thought that would not be fun. And then I got that. I was Oh.

Samantha Armytage: Yeah, well it didn’t look like that, you know, it looked like you knew exactly what you were doing.

Charlie: I had been there a few years before, but actually doing something yourself is a completely different experience. You know, we’ve just come off the back of the Comm games and the Olympic Games all that stuff. And I think that about the athletes, you know, they’re trying so hard and when they’re there, they really have to turn it on. Don’t know for that that short period of time and yeah, the pressure is.

Samantha Armytage: But also. Being out of your own environment, it’s like moving, you know, I used to know even in Sydney and I always loved when I was living in Sydney full time, just creating a little community around us that always knew my dry cleaner and I knew my shoe guy and you know, and I knew the people at the Garden Centre. And so coming down here to leave, I’ve sort of had to create that little community and find, you know, I think it’s really important when you don’t know what you’re doing, like me to seek out people who do. So you can get advice, you know, and gardeners.

Charlie: They love giving advice. If they learn how to do it, they’ll tell you how to do it. It’s not like, you know, they’re not trying to hide anything from you. They want you to succeed as well, which is what I love about it as well.

Samantha Armytage: It’s very generous. Yes. Yeah. Love it.

Charlie: And you’ve been really generous with your time, Sam. Thank you so much. It’s been great having you on and keep doing what you’re doing. It’s amazing.

Samantha Armytage: Oh, well, thank you, Charlie. It’s a pleasure. And I loved doing this.

Charlie: Good man.

Charlie: Well, again, thank you for your time, Sam.

Samantha Armytage: That’s my pleasure, Charlie.

Charlie: The inbox has been filling up over the break between the series, and there are lots of community questions for me to answer, so I’m going to jump straight into it. Well, Tess from Montrose, from an outer suburb in Melbourne, has emailed through a question. She says she’s got wild rabbits trying to get into her garden and she might even have a deer on her fence line. Do I have any tips to keep these pests out of her garden? Well, for the deer you need lots and lots of spiky plants. I did speak with Sam about this, and I would suggest pirate Kantha Berbera. Or even if you’re in a warm area of Melbourne, you could try a bougainvillea.

Charlie: The bonus of that is you’ll get the lovely flowers as well. For the rabbits you need to make up a chilli and garlic spray, take a litre of water, put three chopped up onions in there, some garlic and some chilli and spread onto your plants and that should keep the rabbits at bay. Mel from Barrel has asks. Well, she says, I love you, Charlie. And I love you too, Mel. The check is well and truly in the mail. She’s made a tree change and is loving country life, but she’s moved to a newly built home on two acres and has no garden. So how does she start and where does she start? Well, first things first.

Charlie: Go out and buy my book. That will give you everything you need to know and then make yourself a priority list. You need to work out exactly what you want from the garden and put it in order of importance to you and then try and fit that into the space. In a plan, you’ll quickly work out if it will all fit. And if it doesn’t, don’t be afraid to get rid of the things on the bottom of the list. A garden with too much is almost as bad as a garden with nothing in it at all. Don’t forget as well, soil preparation is key. Once you’ve done all the hard landscaping, make sure you get the soil as good as it possibly can be and your plants will thrive.

Charlie: Do you have a gardening question you’d like me to answer? Well, send an email to Charlie. Still to come that are you and I’ll try and answer your question across the season. I feel so lucky to have chatted with Sam today, and I love the way she’s really embracing the natural landscape around her garden. She’s not scared to seek out advice when it’s needed, and she certainly does love battery power. The one thing that was really interesting for me is the way she’s planning for the future and considering the weather. And it is amazing that she gets in and has a crack herself. Well, thank you for listening to That’s How We Grow in partnership with Stihl Garden Power Tools.

Charlie: Do you need the tools to take on any garden challenge? Well, go to the Stihl website or head to your local Stihl dealer today. There are over 600 local Stihl dealers across Australia and you can easily find your local Stihl dealer on the still website. And on our next episode we will feature Graeme Colless from Evergreen Turf. He’s one of Australia’s pre-eminent turf growers. Graeme works with a wide variety of leading sports venues to ensure they have amazing surfaces. From the two leading golf courses. It’s going to be great to speak to Graeme about caring for beautiful lawns.

Charlie: And this episode will drop in two weeks’ time. Don’t forget to check out Stihl’s blog with plenty of great gardening advice, as well as my key seasonal tips and tricks. And if you want to follow us as well, go to the Stihl Instagram at Stihl underscore a u. You can follow me on Instagram as well Charlie underscore Albone and thank you for listening. Until next time, goodbye.