Gone potty: How to beat out-of-control roots out back

According to Socrates, “To know thyself is the beginning of wisdom”.

Generally recited in its abridged form, “know thyself”, it is advice that is as good as it is old. And yet it is advice we often fail to take when it comes to our gardens.

“People get so caught up on the beautiful details of thins and I always say to them, ‘go through your daily experiences and list down what you love to do,” Marion Fredriksson tells me, as she pours tea into two large mugs.

“For instance, I like to sit — always — in the morning sun. So often people build these beautiful big houses — double garage, fake turf — and they don’t think about where they actually like to spend their time. You need to list all those things down before you design your garden.”

Trained as an architect, Marion now works in urban design and is no stranger to the idea that people tend to — accidentally — create spaces they don’t end up inhabiting. Increasingly, these uninhabited spaces take up real estate in what should have been garden. Not so at Marion’s.

“In winter I live on the front veranda because it gets all the sun,” she explains.

Marion’s front veranda overlooks a beautifully eclectic potted garden. Her plants live in pots because the garden is dominated by a towering eucalyptus, whose roots have filled the ground.

“The garden has morphed over the years, but the tree is just the most beautiful thing,” she smiles, looking up at the bird box she installed.

“The birds love it. I built the box last year and there were three pairs of pink and greys who were always fighting over it. Almost every morning I’d hear them screeching at each other!”

It’s not only galahs who love Marion’s garden.

“I get Carnabys and red-tailed black cockatoos, and I have resident willy wagtails,” she tells me.

“Having eucalypts and stuff is really messy, but you just have to accept that that’s how nature works. You can’t have everything beautiful all the time.”

Marion is a firm believer that the spaces we create, both public and private, should be more thought out and considered.

This is reflected in her own garden. When rebuilding her front wall, Marion intentionally built lower than the standard height so her garden didn’t feel disconnected from the street or her neighbours.

Once filled with straggly, overgrown shrubs, the garden now bursts with light that illuminates her collection of potted plants — lemon trees, mango trees, tiny cacti in painted bowls, candlestick plants, geraniums and succulents pouring from ladles hung in trees.

These are plants that, as Marion points out, are all especially good for sharing.

“I once spoke to this old lady and asked her if I could take a cutting of one of her geraniums”, she said.

“She told me ‘dear, there’s an unwritten rule amongst geranium lovers that you can always take a cutting’.”

It’s advice which, though not as old as that offered by Socrates, is certainly as wise.