THE weather was just perfect on Easter Saturday and more than 400 gardeners and garden lovers took advantage of it to visit the open garden at “Nerimbah”, Cecilia Ng and Don Moffatt's property at Baragoot. Nerimbah has a magnificent cliff-top setting and commands views northward along the rugged coast to Bermagui and south along the sweep of Baragoot beach.
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Cecilia and Don and landscape designer Surajo Frith have developed a garden over the past few years, which harmonises perfectly with adjacent native vegetation, attracts abundant wildlife, and affords both views and shelter for the house.
Plant selection is almost wholly comprised of local native species. Cecilia explained to the very well attended garden tours that the predominant horizontality of the garden, which imitates wind-sheared cliff-top vegetation, is accented by the verticality of occasional taller plantings of coastal sheoaks and mahoganies.
Visitors would have agreed that she had admirably succeeded in “anchoring the house in its landscape”.
The Open Garden event was sponsored by the “Protecting the Wilderness Coast Project”, a joint initiative of the NSW Environmental Trust, Bega Valley Shire Council, Southern Rivers Catchment Management Authority, National Parks and Wildlife Service, Far South Coast Landcare Association.
Project spokesman Stuart Cameron said Nerimbah was a perfect demonstration that coastal gardeners need not resort to the commonplace exotic invasive species that are invading and displacing local natives and producing a mongrel landscape in so many places along our coast.
“Moreover Nerimbah shows that local natives, such as coastal rosemary, can be used to create an elegant formal garden,” he said.
Organisers say the event was an outstanding success and that many visitors left saying that they were inspired to utilise local coastal natives in their own gardens.
Entry to the Open Garden was by gold coin donation for the benefit of the Rural Fire Service and generous visitors contributed more than $900.