Unfurl

Welcome to The Garden Curator Journal. A heartfelt thank you for coming along!

This little adventure has been a long time in the making. It’s somewhat fitting that the development of The Garden Curator began as Spring took flight. As the leaves and blossoms unfurled, the Garden Curator also unfurled, the result of lengthy overwintering and lifelong gathering of thoughts.

My name is Colleen – gardener, designer, painter, maker, wife of a lovely farmer and mother of two gorgeous boys. Home and heart is our property in the picturesque hills near Orange NSW, shared with our menagerie of four legged and feathered friends and surrounded by the ever-changing gifts of the garden.

It’s these gifts that encouraged the creation of The Garden Curator.

As a practicing garden designer, I have watched as modern priorities have crept into the garden. Backyards which were once home to bug collecting kids, choko vines and the trusty Hills Hoist, have often given way to manufactured spaces missing the soul that makes a garden “home”.

Perhaps we can lose the choko, and the Hills Hoist need not be the centrepiece of the yard, but a great garden has so much more to offer than appearances alone! When you think back to childhood and Grandma’s garden, what do you remember? The quality of the pool cleaning, or home-made billycarts and daisy chains?

The Garden Curator is all about celebrating our environment and rediscovering the pleasure of nature in our own backyard. Pause, look, see.

It’s also about re-igniting creativity through the bounties of the garden and our everyday surroundings -simply taking time to notice the little things and “be”. What a lovely relief from these crazy days!

“Everything that slows us down and forces patience, everything that sets us back into the slow circles of nature, is a help. Gardening is an instrument of grace.”— May Sarton

The Garden Curator is underpinned by the “SLOW” philosophy upon which the Slow Food movement has been built. “Slow Gardening” has nothing to do with sluggishness, far from it, but rather encourages us to savour our gardens, engage our senses throughout the seasons and live in the here and now.

Through this journal, my hope is that you will be inspired to embark on your own gardening and creative path.

So let the unfurling begin…..