We visited the Dalton property. On one side are exquisite gardens and delicious café food. That was the best blueberry muffin I have ever eaten. A designer, Xanthe White, Silver winner of Chelsea Garden Awards has charmingly created some refreshingly different garden ‘rooms’ or scenes. My favourite was the spring garden closely followed by the potager with sumptuous strawberries. Until, the chef/gardener says they had been sprayed with rabbit deterrant. Most of us had eaten quite a few by then.
The neighbouring driveway deceives the visitor on first approach as it looks like grazing land from the road but further in, it becomes a sand quarry, bark and sawdust mountain storage area and has a host of buildings. Anyone can go in to load up their ute or trailer with whatever mixture: gravels, rocks, pumice, bark ….. The smell is unique. Our little tour bus tootled around stockpiles of all of the above and more and we climbed structures that sifted and swirled big bits into civilised little bits, whatever the customer desired. It was really fascinating. Then, the kind folk gave us all a bag of premium potting mix to take home. And, I learned it is better to buy ‘controlled’ nutrient release mixtures rather than ‘slow release’. The latter releases nutrients unevenly and the nitrogen is always first to go.
