Tania Howard points to a towering manna gum in her garden and says “that’s about 25 years old. I planted that when our son Luke was a pre-schooler.” Like Duke, who is now adult with a career as an intake clinician, the nineacre (3.6ha) garden at Riddells Creek in Victoria’s Macedon Ranges is a fully fledged version of its younger self.
Tania and her builder husband Ronald bought the block, which they call Downstream for its location on a steeply sloping block bounded by a creek, in 1993. “It had been on the market for four and a half years, because anybody could see it was just too much work,” Tania says. “The whole block was covered in rocks, blackberry and gorse. Every Sunday we’d come out here and dig out prickles with a pick. We made it a rule that we couldn’t go home until we had pulled 50.”
”With the rocks, we just started at the top and rolled them down the hill,” Ronald adds. “Fortunately, we had a bobcat and were able to shift them pretty easily.” Those rocks now serve as retaining walls and bed edges in the garden as well as formwork and walls for the house, which Ronald and Tania designed built over a 10-year period.
Six generations of Ronald’s family have lived in the district and Ronald remembers rabbiting on the block as a youngster. Tania’s family are more recent arrivals as she moved there in 1980 with her parents. Tania’s father was a nurseryman and established Tan-y-bont, a daffodil farm, which, for a few weeks each year, sold cut flowers via an honesty box arrangement to just about everyone in the Macedon Ranges.
Ronald, who completed his apprenticeship with a builder in Sunbury, noticed Tania, who walked the two kilometres to the station each morning to catch a train to her job at Sussan’s in Melbourne, as he was driving to work. “After a few months, I stopped and offered her a lift,” Ronald recalls. “I was a shy young guy.” The rest is history and the Howards married and welcomed Luke and daughter Sofia, who is an environmental, social and governance administrator, to the family.
Ronald credits working with Melbourne architecture firm Peddle Thorp and Learmonth with opening his eyes to what was possible with the design for the house and through the years, he and Tania worked around their building business, Tania’s job as the part-time gardener for Very Special Kids Holiday accommodation in Woodend and other commitments to make their vision a reality. Tania grew up in a family of artists – her mother’s paintings and father’s pottery are displayed throughout the house – and also shares an for colour and sense of style.
The garden, however, involved more direct input, as in 1999 Tania’s father gifted them 1700 bulbs, which they planted in ribbons that follow the contours of the land and now make a spectacle in early spring each year. “Fortunately, daffodils are not affected by frosts, so the bulbs can stay in the ground during winter,” Tania says. “We do, however, dig them up and separate them to create the display you see today. There would be tens of thousands of bulbs in the garden now.”
It is indeed difficult to imagine just how far the Howards’ property has come in the 32 years since they first arrived. Along with the manna gum, mature river red gums, blackwoods, river she oaks and various wattles punctuate the grounds, which also feature a large dam and a billabong and several large claret ash frame the house. The main garden is planted to a casual mixed perennial border that surrounds the house and starts to come into its own at the start of November.
Various sculptures feature throughout the grounds and Tania is particularly fond of a row of 10 green bottles manicured from juniper spartan that screens the shed. “The ancient black clay is a challenge for gardeners,” Tania says. “It’s more suited to cricket pitches,” Ronald adds. “But through the years we’ve added so my organic matter, just about anything that suits our climate grows now.”
“Between weeding, mulching and feeding the ground in winter there’s not much downtime,” Tania adds. “In summer, it’s all about keeping the watering up and deheading flowers and in spring, it’s mowing and hedge trimming.” Nonetheless, as a type 1 diabetic, she says the garden has been her salvation. “Managing my condition is all about balancing insulin and activity and gardening is something I can do at my own pace, which is usually pretty fast, according the Ronald,” she says.
Internally, the house is a tribute to Ronald’s building skills and Tania’s eye for colour and interior design. The cathedral style entrance features a line of lights that references squid boat lights and is a reminder that in his ‘spare’ time Ronald restored a 1959 fishing trawler that the family used to enjoy on holidays and weekends. Pride of place in the open kitchen and dining area goes to a splendid Esse cooker, which doubles duty for heating the underfloor slab. Large picture windows frame views of the garden and in the living area a montage of daffodil art works serves as a reminder of the brief spring spectacle.
As the Howards head towards retirement, they have made the difficult decision to put Downstream on the market. “It’s time to downsize to something a bit smaller,” Tania says. “We’ve done little but work for the past 30 years and now we’re looking to move to the Mornington Peninsula.”
She admits she has a shopping list for their potential buyer. “Hopefully, someone who’s always wanted a garden but hasn’t had the space will come along,” she says. “It would be nice if someone who appreciates the birdlife and animals the garden attracts. We’ve counted more than 100 different creatures in recent years. At first, we thought we’d dig up some of the daffodils and take them with us. But now we’ve decided to leave Dad’s legacy where it is.”
As for their new home, the Howards say they are looking to downsize a bit. “Perhaps a house with a 1950s to ‘70s vibe,” Ronald says. “Established trees will come with that sort of house. To a certain extent we’re prepared to do another renovation, just not to the scale this property has involved.” AC
