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Deryn Thrope - Dishes All The Dirt
30 Plays4 years ago
Deryn Thorpe is an award winning horticultural journalist and podcast host. Deryn dishes 'all the dirt' with host Mykal about her garden, process as a writer for Gardening Australia Magazine as well as her family business and time as a specialist garden tour guide.
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Episode Links:
Deryns Website
Deryns Instagram
Plantation and Landcare Services
All The Dirt Podcast
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Growing Media Links:
GROWING MEDIA WEBSITE
Instagram - @Growingmediaaus
Facebook - @Growingmediaaus
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Mykal's Links:
Instagram - @mykalhoare
Facebook - @mykalhoare
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Transcript
Podcast Introduction and Acknowledgments
00:00:03
Speaker
Growing Media is a proudly independent podcast produced by me, Michael Hall, with zero corporate or network interference in our content. But this means we are running on the smell of an oily rag over here. So if you like the show and would like to make a small contribution, you could head over to our Patreon. You can find the link in our show notes.
00:00:28
Speaker
The producers of growing media recognise the traditional owners of the land on which this podcast is recorded and pay respects to Aboriginal elders past, present and those emerging.
Guest Introduction: Derren Thorpe
00:00:43
Speaker
G'day and welcome to the show. I am your host, Michael Haw. And my guest today is an award-winning mainstay of the Australian horticultural media, gracing our pages and our airwaves for the past 30 years. She's an experienced garden consultant and public speaker. She's the best from the West. Please welcome horticultural journalist and co-host of the All The Dirt podcast, Darren Thorpe. Thanks for being here, Darren.
00:01:09
Speaker
Michael, that's such a lovely introduction. I'm honoured to be on your podcast. Now, that's not just all you do. You know, you've been a television presenter, you organise events, you've edited books, you've volunteered with Open Gardens Australia. The list goes on. You're a specialist garden tour guide.
00:01:30
Speaker
Well the thing is if you work in the horticultural industry you have to be a little bit diverse because otherwise it's hard to make a decent
Derren's Journey to Gardening
00:01:40
Speaker
living. Well that's right but now before we dive back into that I want to turn the tables on you and ask you where did all this start? Tell me about your childhood, where'd you grow up? Well I was born in England so I lived there for the first six years of my life
00:01:58
Speaker
and then my parents became 10 pound poms so in 67 they got on a boat and came over to Perth and so I really had you know traditional Australian childhood grew up on you know house and my mum was a King gardener
00:02:15
Speaker
she had a nice garden. But if you spoke to her, she tells people all the time that Derren did not like going outside into the garden much because she didn't like getting her hands dirty. I tell you what, my mum would probably say the exact same about me, but now I'm a gardener also, so there you go.
00:02:34
Speaker
So I always say, if she'd given me decent gloves, I'd probably go out there. So yeah, so I used to go and cut flowers for the house. So I've always loved, you know, beauty and flowers and that sort of stuff. But I just didn't like getting my hands dirty, I guess. So when did you start liking getting your hands dirty?
00:02:53
Speaker
I didn't start liking it until I owned my own house. So it would have been in the 80s. We bought a house that had quite a big amount of land and it was a Federation house, quite an attractive house. Beautiful. Well, we could see it would be an attractive house once we, you know, painted and looked after it a bit. But I wanted to make the garden fit the house. And so I basically started gardening. Is that the same house you're still in now?
00:03:21
Speaker
No, we moved from that block because I wanted a bigger garden. So it had 850 square meter. So that was the land size, but I wanted more.
Venturing into Horticultural Journalism
00:03:33
Speaker
I was greedy for more. What do you want now? About 1220.
00:03:39
Speaker
Oh beautiful nice that's about the same as mine actually. It's a good size. It's a good size and it's pretty good we're sort of in the city so it's a great size for that and it you know it gives me options to do a bit of everything. I mean you know sometimes I think there's not enough space and on some days after a long day in the garden I think I've got too much. Oh that's it. So how did you get into horticultural media?
00:04:06
Speaker
Well, I became once I once we've moved to this house, I started getting really into the garden.
00:04:13
Speaker
I would join all these garden clubs and I used to follow old ladies behind, you know? So we'd go on a garden tour and I always knew who knew the most and I'd actually just sort of walk with them or walk next to them and try and absorb as much as I could.
Success of All The Dirt Podcast
00:04:28
Speaker
It's the best way. But it is the best way. But after I had children, I went back working at the West Australian. I've been a journalist my whole life.
00:04:39
Speaker
I've worked for the Australian and the West Australian and all sorts of places but I went back to the West Australian basically writing features so homes and living type stuff and I did a few garden articles but I was never the expert I'd go and speak to people and I was very interested and one day I was speaking to the editor
00:05:03
Speaker
about things and she said you know so much about gardening why don't you write a garden column and I said oh no no no I just don't know enough I said no and then she came back to me six months later and said look we want someone reliable like you and we'd like really want you to do it and if you don't I'm going to find someone else on staff
00:05:24
Speaker
And I actually thought, well, probably on staff, there's no one else that, you know, he's really into gardening. So that's when I started. Yeah, it was a great angle. So I started ramping up my knowledge and I was actually, you know, writing the column for quite a long while and I was actually on radio dispensing, you know, gardening advice when I went back to study horticulture.
00:05:48
Speaker
Oh, right. So you were already well into the kind of horticultural journalism per se before you actually kind of studied it. That's interesting. Yeah. So I actually then got some formal qualifications, but to be honest,
00:06:01
Speaker
as much you know as much as like in Western Australia we don't have like university qualifications in horticulture we do have botany and other things so I actually did it at TAFE and I think I've learned just as much from hanging on the you know the coattails of little old ladies and reading reading extensively I listened to podcasts
00:06:24
Speaker
and joining garden clubs. There's nothing better than belonging to a garden club that have good speakers to learn more. You know, self-education, I think. That's right. Well, I think you've got to. I mean, I felt the same way about horticulture through TAFE. Like you learn a whole bunch, but there's nothing like getting your hands in the soil yourself and the practical learning and the knowledge through other people who've been doing it for years and years and years.
00:06:51
Speaker
Now, you mentioned before that just then about you listening to podcasts, but you are a co-host of All The Dirt with Steve Wood. You're about 150 episodes in. Can you believe that? Well, four years ago when we started it, we just thought we'd give it a go. So four years ago, there weren't garden podcasts happening so much in Australia.
00:07:17
Speaker
And we just thought, you know, so we bought the equipment or Steve bought the equipment and we set up and we started doing it in my lounge room. And, you know, we, you know, we didn't know really what we were doing, but both Steve and I had worked on radio and had that media background. Steve's a very knowledgeable horticulturalist and people, people tended to like it. And, you know, at the beginning, we'd get excited if we had, you know, 200 people downloading it.
00:07:47
Speaker
And now we just can't believe, like, you know, we're popular all over Australia and actually have more people listening on the east coast of Australia than on the west coast. Well, I am an east coast listener here. I love the podcast. I'm a big fan of it. It was a shining light when I was looking for real knowledge on gardening and horticulture. And, you know, the podcast stretches from sustainability all the way through to just like practical tips on how to garden. And I think that's what makes it so special.
00:08:18
Speaker
What I like about it is that we're learning every week as well like when we have special guests on we often all have scientists on that will be soil experts and you know we are learning too but you know we are really enthusiastic like Steve and I do we garden we love gardening we love learning
00:08:38
Speaker
And we enjoy, you know, it's just like a casual conversation. And it's been really, really good fun. And, you know, four years, 150 episodes. And, you know, we've won a couple of prizes. You sure have. You got the 2020 and the 2018 Audio Laurel Award from the Horticultural Media Association Australia.
Writing for Gardening Australia Magazine
00:09:01
Speaker
That's fantastic. Yes. It's only held every couple of years.
00:09:06
Speaker
And we won the award, which blows my mind. We were up against all of the horticultural radio programs and we won. Well, it's a testament to both of you because it genuinely is a great podcast. Thank you. A lot of times us as journalists don't get to speak about our processes, you know, informulating stories. Now you write for Gardening Australia magazine.
00:09:33
Speaker
So could you tell us a little bit about what your process is when you kind of start writing an article?
00:09:41
Speaker
Well, it depends what I'm writing about. So we, Gardening Australia, we, I guess we do two or three, we do three sorts of types of stories. So there'll be one where you'll go out to a garden and you'll speak to the garden owner and you'll write about the garden. So that's one type. The other type is where you'll have a theme. So I think of a recent theme was like black plants, which I did black foliage plants. And then you'll, you know, have a whole list of them.
00:10:11
Speaker
or you'll have one particular type of plant and you'll talk about it. So what I tend to do is write down first of all what I know about the plant. So say I'm writing about black foliage plants I'll have to submit to the editor and what I would have done in the
00:10:28
Speaker
earlier times, I would have actually sent her a whole list of stories that if she likes them, she can commission me to write. Once you get experience, you don't have to write the article first and then try to find someone to buy it. I'm lucky enough that my stuff gets commissioned. You just put ideas forward and then write the article once they've given you the okay.
00:10:52
Speaker
Yeah, that's right. Or sometimes they'll come up with something and they'll know it's something that I'm knowledgeable about and they'll just send it out to me. So I'm pretty fortunate. What's your favourite type of article to write? I love writing articles about gardens. Yeah.
00:11:07
Speaker
because I think when you go out to a garden and you speak to the garden owner you can learn so much even if it's not the type of garden that's your style that you garden at home and I've learned some of my best tips from talking to other gardeners you'll sometimes come home with maybe a handful of seeds some cuttings some cuttings or you'll look at it and think
00:11:31
Speaker
Oh no, they haven't got it right. Like they haven't got the design right. Sometimes you can look and think, oh, they've got a great view down there, but they've put that shrub in there and you can't see it, or they haven't planned it. So you've got lines of sight. It's really funny. I mean, you're not likely to say that, but you can actually learn a lot from going to visit gardens. And then when you go back,
00:11:55
Speaker
you've actually got to try and instill some information about the gardening. But for me, I really like to interview the person in detail, take really good notes and almost let them tell the story. Yeah. So for me, it's better than me saying, oh, you know, on the left hand side, there's a ficus. I mean, rather than saying that,
00:12:17
Speaker
I like them to talk about you know or when we started out with a garden we weren't sure what we were going to do and then I because that's the type of article that I like to read so I think it's better for it I mean sometimes you get people that aren't talkers and that makes it difficult but you know but if they are chatty or you know or they like to talk about their garden that's how I like to do it whereas say with the black foliage plant story
00:12:45
Speaker
I actually first of all would do a list of the 10 ones I think will be suitable actually I did a list of about 14 I think then I sent it in and they had to check which ones they could get good photos of because in magazines it's all dependent on the photos
00:13:02
Speaker
And I really tried to make sure that we got a
Derren's Gardening Style and Philosophy
00:13:05
Speaker
range. So I wanted to have some Australian plants. So we've got plants like we've got some of the dark leaf leptospermum, we've got the brainiac, you know, I wanted to have some of those. Then I wanted to have some herbaceous plants. So things like the blackleaf dahlia, maybe the best known one is Bishop of Landaff.
00:13:24
Speaker
I wanted to have a combination of plants and then I wanted to do some indoor plants because, well we only did one, which was the Xamio Carlos Raven, because there's lots of people who are really into gardening now who don't necessarily have a garden and indoor plants tend to be one of the biggest trends at the moment. Well that's exactly right, yeah.
00:13:47
Speaker
You've learnt a lot over your time from other gardeners through writing about other gardens and other gardeners. Has that informed your own garden?
00:13:59
Speaker
Yes, it has. Early on in the 80s when I really started gardening, the big trend at that time was cottage gardens. So everyone wanted a cottage garden with white roses, sitting here with the garden that everyone wanted to go and visit.
00:14:18
Speaker
that's sitting horses in England. That was the real trend at the time. So then I joined the Cottage Garden Clubs and I also joined an organization called Heritage Roses in Australia. Okay. And they were a fantastic group and I really got to love the old roses, not just because of their form, I like their really relaxed look.
00:14:44
Speaker
But I love the stories behind them. So I really wanted then to actually have a garden that was as much a historical event that's taking it a bit far. But I wanted to be able to say, oh, this rose, her name's
00:15:03
Speaker
Her name is Tipsy Imperial concubine and she was named after a beauty of the Tang Dynasty and she's named because in the sun when it gets really warm the roses get this flush look just like the concubine used to get on her cheeks. So even in your own garden you're really telling a story.
00:15:27
Speaker
I love telling stories. There's nothing better than, you know, when I occasionally, and I'm saying it very occasionally, have blips through. I love being able to tell them a story or, you know, about, about the plants in the garden. And I also like to tell them, gardeners are funny. They seldom tell you about their successes because they hope you can actually see them, but they love telling you about all the things that haven't worked.
00:15:55
Speaker
Well, that's right. And I know that you do that a lot on your own podcast, which is fantastic. I think the only way to really learn is by stuffing things up.
00:16:05
Speaker
I mean, you know, we fail all the time. The only bad thing about failing with plants is it takes a long while if you're failing with something that's been grown for a couple of years. It takes a while for it to grow again. But you know, I want to tell people about the things that haven't worked. Like today, I was just in the garden looking at my veggie patch, thinking how fantastic my broccoli crop has been this year. And we've had a lot of trouble with, you know, the white cabbage moss.
00:16:32
Speaker
And during lockdown I decided I was really going to get on top of it, this was a year ago and I've always fancied you know having those little white cutouts in the garden and so I cut out all these little butterfly motifs and I pinned them with just drawing pins onto some bamboo stakes and I put them all through the veggie patch, well you know they didn't last for long, they didn't
00:17:01
Speaker
they didn't they didn't stop they didn't stop the caterpillars you know appearing and the moths slaying the eggs and they all eventually blew away in the wind but this year i've discovered
00:17:11
Speaker
that I put a lot of holly hollyhock seeds in and I've discovered that all these hollyhocks the leaves seem to have been attracting the white butterflies and they've been laying eggs on them and they've been chewing up the hollyhocked leaves which is no great problem because they just produce more leaves and I just throw them off. Yes
00:17:33
Speaker
So I know where to go to find the caterpillars and I dispose of them. But it means that I haven't had them so bad in my broccoli patch. So that's something that I just discovered. A bit of a decoy planting there then. It is a decoy planting.
00:17:54
Speaker
It's perfect, isn't it? And it was just something that I just discovered by observing.
Promoting Open Gardens in Western Australia
00:18:00
Speaker
Hopefully it's something that other people can try. Now, speaking of your garden, you mentioned before that you do open gardens occasionally and you've volunteered with Open Gardens Australia for six years, I believe.
00:18:14
Speaker
Yeah, I was chair of selectors in Perth, which is trying to encourage the selectors to go out and find more gardens. It was a voluntary thing. But I really believe in open gardens so strongly. And it was great when we had a national scheme. But what's happened since then is many of the states
00:18:40
Speaker
have actually set up their own state-based schemes. And I was instrumental in getting our West Australian scheme going. It's called Open Gardens West Coast. So we actually called a meeting and I spoke at the meeting to try and get a few dollars together. And to actually get it started, I actually opened my own garden. That's fantastic.
00:19:06
Speaker
And then the money from that got them up and going and now it's really successful here in Perth and got a great committee. I'm not on that committee but it's got a great committee that really get things happening and I just love it and I go and visit as many gardens as I can. So you're a bit of a founding member then really?
00:19:30
Speaker
I was. Everyone has to play their part. And if you really believe in something and you want it to happen, if we all stand back and wait for someone else to make it happen, it may not happen. It never will. Now take me on a little bit of an audio tour of your garden. I come through the front gates. What do I see?
00:19:54
Speaker
Well, as you come through the front gate, this double front gate, the central path that leads up to the front door, the house is set above the garden. And then I have two wide garden beds and that's where I have a lot of roses.
00:20:12
Speaker
a lot of perennials and I also have my veggie beds there because I really believe yes because I believe that you know you can show off your vegetables and that's also the best the best sight for me it's north facing and we did have veggie beds I had a raised bed in the ground
00:20:34
Speaker
for which I had some success but since I've moved to wicking beds it has been phenomenal. It has changed my whole relationship with veggie growing. Okay what do you think the difference was there like the competition in the soil or moisture?
00:20:53
Speaker
both that. So one of the biggest problems for me is that every single tree root, and I've got trees in the front garden, and so do my neighbours, goes to suck up the goodness that you put in your veggie patch. I mean, why wouldn't they? And I tried putting down
00:21:11
Speaker
geotextile membrane all sorts of things but those tree roots are just so you know determined so they got through so once they get in you know they're sucking up all the nutrients and all the
00:21:27
Speaker
with the moisture and your veggies just don't do as well. So we actually got some of the big plastic containers that you can get. You've got to make sure that you get ones that haven't had anything toxic in them and we cut one in half. So I've got two veggie beds there. We put good drainage in the bottom and a drainage pipe because otherwise when it's wet in winter
00:21:57
Speaker
there can be too much water in there you've got to actually be able to drain them and then we filled them with good soil and it's been it's been just fantastic. Growing Media is a proudly independent podcast produced by me Michael Hall with zero corporate or network interference in our content.
00:22:18
Speaker
But this means we are running on the smell of an oily rag over here. So if you like the show and would like to make a small contribution, you could head over to our Patreon. You can find the link in our show notes. Obviously living in Western Australia, it's miles away from the East Coast. I wanted to know what some of the challenges of gardening in WA are.
00:22:41
Speaker
Oh, that's such a good question, Michael. We have some of the least fertile soils anywhere. So except for the hills area of Perth, we all garden on sand, and it's not far removed from beach sand. So it's very poor, as it doesn't, it's very sandy, obviously, it doesn't hold on to nutrients. So all the nutrients leach through.
00:23:08
Speaker
And over the last 10 years, we've changed how we garden. We used to always put lots of compost in and that does help because that holds on to some nutrients. But we've actually discovered that clay really works. So some people put in bentonite clay.
00:23:24
Speaker
because they have very fine particles. I prefer kaolin clay and both of them are mined in WA and you actually incorporate that into the top 30 centimeters of the soil. I know on the east coast people listening in will just think I cannot believe that you buy clay but you do and you work it in and so clay and sand together make sloane but you've got to put quite a bit in to actually make it work. How much do you have to put in?
00:23:52
Speaker
In a new garden bed, I'll put a layer of, say, two centimetres of clay on top, and then I'll put about three or four centimetres of beautiful compost, either homemade or some you've bought. So still putting in compost?
00:24:11
Speaker
Yep, and then I use a hoe and I work that into the top 15 centimetres. You don't really need it any deeper than 20 centimetres because what you really need to do is to build up, you need it to hold on to moisture. And what we're trying to do these days when we garden is we're trying to build up all the microbial activity.
00:24:32
Speaker
because while in the past we've discovered that you can feed plants using fertilizer we've now discovered if you can make your soil perfect for microbes they actually will get the fertilizer by breaking down humus and then they will actually move it and feed it to your plants. Plants encourage the microbes in your garden
00:24:58
Speaker
they make their energy by photosynthesis, but up to 40% of the sugars they make in the process of photosynthesis, they actually put out through their roots, they exude sugars through their roots to feed the microbes. So there's a symbiotic relationship happening in the ground, and we all have to try and, you know, if you want a good garden, if you can feed the microbes, they'll feed your plants.
Sustainable Gardening Practices
00:25:27
Speaker
certainly need to start taking care of our soils and taking more of an interest in what we're putting into them. I guess agriculture particularly has some sort of explaining to do when it comes to climate change. But on that note, what is something that the home gardener can do in the face of our climate crisis?
00:25:49
Speaker
Well, I try not to use poisons in my garden. So if I'm going to use something, I will try and use something that's organic. We can say everything's organic, but you know, something that won't harm the environment. For example, at the moment we have had in person a very bad infestation
00:26:11
Speaker
of chili syrup and it's been terrible and there are products that you can buy some of the nico niceds like imidacloprid and acetameprid that you can use but i know how bad they are for the environment yes so i'm using neem oil but if you use neem oil it means you've got to you can't just treat it once you've got to treat it 10 days and then you know once and then back in another 10 days and really keep on top of it
00:26:40
Speaker
So I was going to say does it need so do the chilli thrift really need like a um a systemic? Well if we can break the cycle um I'm assured by the entomologist if you can break the cycle using the oils you you'll be right but they say it's not enough to spray once and that's the problem you know we think oh we treat it once and
00:27:04
Speaker
So at the moment I've got, after I finish pruning the front roses, and I should be finished today, I've got to do my second spray, I've got a backpack, I've put neem oil in the water and I'll go around the garden and spray every single rose over all the foliage.
00:27:24
Speaker
and yeah I'll continue doing that and I'm actually while they say twice I'm going to do it three or four times because I really want to get on top of it because my whole rose thing was challenged. So I think that's what we've got to do. The other thing I think if you can grow some of your own food
00:27:42
Speaker
You're really helping with food miles, you're really helping, you know, sustainability. If you can, you know, if you can grow some of your own food. And the other thing that I think is really important for the home gardener is to try and make a bit of compost. Like, you know, if you have a block, you could have one of those. I like those
00:28:04
Speaker
compost tumblers the ones that you can turn because they work quite quickly and they're really good because if you live in a city you might have problems with rats so they're really good with that or if you don't have one you can just take say your potato peelings outside dig a little hole and pop it pop it in the ground
00:28:22
Speaker
Yeah, and then it will break down, it will feed the plants, and all of that stuff isn't going into landfill because that's one of our big problems at the moment, you know, that we're producing all this waste, you know, and try not to. The other thing you can do is mulch. You can mulch up a lot of your trimmings. I don't mulch up everything. Roses that might have diseases, I actually put into my green waste.
00:28:50
Speaker
But you can melt up, you know, your chick prunings and put them over the ground. And or some of the other thing I do is if I'm pruning some things, I do the old permaculture trick of chop and drop.
00:29:05
Speaker
Yes, of course, just layering it down and letting that nutrients kind of feed back into the soil.
Landcare and Revegetation Projects
00:29:12
Speaker
Yep. You're actually very passionate about sustainability, so much so that your family business, which is called Plantation and Landcare Services, you run it with your husband, Bill.
00:29:24
Speaker
And the business provides a revegetation projects for mines and quarries, as well as creating shelter belts for farming. Can you tell me a little bit about your involvement in the business and how it all got started?
00:29:39
Speaker
I met my husband overseas and he was trained in forestry and we worked at the six forestry companies in Perth and one of them offered him a job so they actually worked doing rear forestation and later on he went out by himself and we think we do quite important work because a lot of the work we do is on farms and we have a big problem in Western Australia
00:30:05
Speaker
and that because so many trees have been cut down the farmers did what they were told by the government they cleared the land so they could grow crops but that means that the water tables in many areas rise to the top and as they rise they bring salts with them and as they the soil goes salty nothing will grow there well very few things will grow there
00:30:28
Speaker
So we've actually developed or Bill really has developed a system where we can plant out salt tolerant plants and eventually bring these areas back to being productive again. It takes a long time and it's become very popular lately especially in sheep growing areas because we can plant out salt bush.
00:30:50
Speaker
Many people know salt bush, you know, we can actually eat it. Often it's a tucker bush plant, you know, bush tucker plant. And so the sheep can eat it. So we plant a lot of salt bush out there, which, you know, farmers like it because they're improving their land and they're providing fodder for their sheep. Well, that's right. And I suppose during drought times, you know, that fodder is really valuable to the farmers.
00:31:17
Speaker
It is, as long as they've got some sort of a water source for the sheep because otherwise, you know what it's like when you eat too many potato chips, you need a drink. Dry mouth. The same sort of thing. So we do that and we do mindsights.
00:31:33
Speaker
And we do rural subdivisions as well. But it's a very busy time because all of our planting has to be done in winter. Yes. Because none of the trees and shrubs get any supplementary water. If there's no kind of follow up care for those plants, is there like a special planting technique that's used?
00:31:54
Speaker
Well, it depends on the area. We always deep rip before we put plants in the ground. So that actually breaks through any hard pan and allows the roots to get down to any moisture. And if you deep rip way before you plant, then all the subsurface, when it rains, the subsurface moisture will go down. So there's an area for the roots to go to. We also plant our trees quite deep.
00:32:23
Speaker
So stem planting so we plant cover up some of the stem as well like it's not like you plant them at if you bought a plant from the nursery you planted at the same height, you know that you that the soil was in in your pot in the ground.
00:32:41
Speaker
and we plant them deeper and we plant very tiny plants. So we like to plant, we do tube stock, but we actually prefer cell stock where the actual cells are only about two centimeters, maybe three centimeters by three centimeters. Wow, that's small.
00:32:57
Speaker
And we've proved, I mean, everyone knows, if you plant something that size, compared to say something in a 17 centimetre pot or even bigger, at the end of the year, the small one will be the same size as the bigger one. Yeah, and they establish so much better, don't they? They do establish better, they're cheaper to plant, they eat for us, you know, we plant up to half a million trees every winter, which is a lot, it's a lot.
00:33:27
Speaker
Four to five hundred thousand. It's it's huge. How many people do that?
00:33:32
Speaker
Well, it depends. So we can have up to eight staff during that winter period. Normally young, youngish, because, you know, as they said the other day, you know, but a lot of time on your feet, like you can easily work walks 35,000 steps in a day. Yeah. So, yeah, it's, you know, and Bill and I are not getting younger. So
00:33:58
Speaker
Yeah, it's rewarding and we can go all over the state and actually see the difference that we've made, you know, all the trees that are there and the shrubs and when we fly over Perth and we leave Perth, you know, in the olden days and we used to travel a bit, we can fly out and we can actually look down, Bill's actually got a much better sense of where everything is and he can say, see that? We did that.
00:34:22
Speaker
And it is rewarding. It's a very rewarding business to be in. But can I tell you, it's really, really hard work. What's the hardest thing about it?
00:34:35
Speaker
I think the hardest thing in many ways is the organization because you've got to get the trees grown. You've got to work out how many contracts you're going to have, what sort of trees to order. And then you've got to order that picking the trees up and storing them. At the moment, there's lots on my front lawn and look after them there. And then you've got to have all the vehicles and all the trailers
00:35:02
Speaker
to take them and the workers on site. And because we're often away from home, you've also got the logistics of having to find accommodation for everyone in these tin pots, in these tiny little places.
00:35:17
Speaker
So I think the logistics is probably the hardest. I mean, it is hard physical labor and long days. I mean, we pay by the hour. So we start at first light. And I mean, in some of the places we go to, we're traveling for five or six hours just to get there.
00:35:36
Speaker
wow yeah and then you know before you've before you've even put a tree in the ground so i think that's the hardest thing but all credit goes to bill davy she's um you know he's such a hard worker and he's um yeah he's very good i really think i'm just as i i just play a supporting role he's fantastic
00:35:54
Speaker
Well, everyone needs a support team behind them to get the job done.
Garden Tour Guide Experiences
00:35:59
Speaker
And it's very important work there. It's incredibly important actually. So you also are a tour guide for ASA. You're a specialist garden tour guide. How did you get that gig?
00:36:14
Speaker
It's the best gig ever being a specialist tour guide. I started out with Travel Light and I applied to them and suggested where we could go and I actually put the itinerary together and that's how I started.
00:36:29
Speaker
So I've been lucky enough to go all over the world taking people to see gardens, you know, places like Italy and France and the Channel Islands, places in America. But these days we're tending only to do tours in Australia. Funnily enough. Funnily enough. And I do have some scheduled, you know, the summer scheduled to New Zealand. Oh cool.
00:36:56
Speaker
Yeah, so we'll just have to see how things go. What's your favourite garden? Oh, that's like asking which child is from it. I think my favourite place to see gardens would probably be England. Oh, OK, lovely.
00:37:13
Speaker
And that's because the English are all such keen gardeners. And all of the great gardens in England have such great design. Because while I'm a plants woman and love plants, what I really like about a garden is the combination of design and choosing the right plants. And you can go to a collector's garden where they might have the best collection of, I don't know, say daffodils. But if they don't have
00:37:40
Speaker
a design, it's just not pleasing to the eye. So that's our like. And I also really like to go to New Zealand because they've got a fantastic gardening climate. So that's a really, really nice place to go.
00:37:57
Speaker
I mean I like it because I like showing people and I like talking with them about the garden and how it works and you know not just saying oh that's this plant that's that plant but say you know look at how that beautiful yellow leaf plant draws your eye through the dark shadows you know sort of trying to point out why the garden works
00:38:20
Speaker
And I also like it because people can go away by themselves. So say you really want to go and see gardens, but you don't have a friend who'll go away with you. You go away on a tour guide. You normally meet some nice people. And I always invite everyone for a drink at the end of the day if they want to drink or a glass of water. And then I say, oh, well, you know, I thought we might go and try that Italian restaurant down the road tonight.
00:38:47
Speaker
So you're never by yourself. So that's the other thing I like about it, you know, you can, yeah, you can take people away and they don't have to, you know, worry that they haven't got their friend to come with them. Yeah. Oh no, that's really good. It's really good. And I get to see places that, you know, I get that I might not have been able to go. If you go with a good company, they'll often have entree to a lot of private gardens.
00:39:13
Speaker
Yes. And they're often the best. It's not the big botanic gardens that anyone can go to that would tend to visit so much as the private gardens because it's meeting the gardeners and talking to them about the garden that really helps bring it to life. That's right. Yeah.
00:39:29
Speaker
Have you toured many Australian gardens? I have. I have, quite a few. I've actually taken some great tours to Victoria. I think Victoria has some of the best gardens, you know, best gardens in the country, some fantastic gardens. And we have some great designers there, so people like
00:39:51
Speaker
Paul Bangay and Philip Johnson, Fiona Brockoff. I love seeing their gardens or going to places like Cloud Hill or Heronswood, places where they've got that real gardening tradition. I find that really exciting. Also places, I mean, there's great gardens too. I mean, every, you know,
00:40:13
Speaker
South Australia, Queensland, New South Wales, there's great gardens all over. Western Australia has some good gardens, but I think Western Australia is more of a place to go to in late winter, early spring to go and look at the wildflowers. There are some good gardens, but not as many as perhaps we have on the East Coast because gardening here is much more difficult.
Upcoming Engagements and Podcast Wrap-up
00:40:40
Speaker
Yes, absolutely.
00:40:42
Speaker
What's coming up for you? What have you got in the pipelines this year?
00:40:46
Speaker
Oh, well, this year. Well, it's been, everything's been a bit delayed because of COVID, but I speak a lot at garden festivals. So I'm off to go and open the Ravensthorpe Garden Festival, which is in one of our greatest biodiversity hotspots in Southwest WA. And I'm also off to speak at the Wongan Hills Garden Festival.
00:41:13
Speaker
So I've got all of that happening and on top of it all a bit of a private tour sort of tying them all together going to look at wildflowers and gardens in in southwest Western Australia because as you know at the moment with COVID we can't rely that we'll be able to you know get into other states. Leave the state yeah exactly.
00:41:39
Speaker
But next year I've got some tours planned to New Zealand and to Tasmania. Fantastic. Great gardens in Tassie. I forgot to mention Tassie before, but fabulous gardens. Bit of that cooler climate, yeah.
00:41:55
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, there's some beautiful gardens. So that's part of that's part of my plan. And if people are interested, if they keep an eye on my website, I'll I'll put the details up there. Keep an eye out. That website is darrenthorp.com.au. You could go to allthedirt.com.au, which is the podcast website. Your Instagram is at darrenthorp. And your Facebook is darrenthorpgarden.
00:42:24
Speaker
Oh, thank you. You've done the whole... I've got it all here. Thank you so much, Darren. It's been an absolute pleasure talking to you today. Thank you, Michael. I've really enjoyed it.
00:42:40
Speaker
Thanks so much for catching up with me today, guys. You can follow the pod at, at Growing Media Oz. And I'm at Michael Haw, M-Y-K-A-L-H-O-A-R-E. Please don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe to the show. And if you could tell two of your best friends about the show, I would be eternally grateful. I just want to get the word out, really. Hooroo, see you in a fortnight.