WE had arranged to meet in front of the Captain James Cook Memorial Fountain in Civic Park, but, of course, John Le Messurier is standing amid the garden beds, absorbed in the flowers.
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From a distance, the celebrated gardener from Redhead looks as though he is being consumed by the primulas and poppies, their warm colours blazing under the flawless winter sky.
But Le Messurier is delighted by more than the flowers.
"I've just been watching a butterfly over on the hawthorn, and we have bees here having a great time," he says.
"Three in one flower!"
Yet it is not just the oranges and whites, the reds and yellows of the flowers that are striking. So is the glint of the golden spade that John Le Messurier is holding.
The spade was one of the prizes Le Messurier won when he was named the 2018 Gardener of the Year by the ABC's popular Gardening Australia program.
The title recognised Le Messurier's 43-year effort in regenerating the grounds of the Glenrock Scout camp.
Suddenly, thanks to Gardening Australia and its host Costa Georgiadis, Le Messurier is celebrated among green thumbs for being the holder of the golden spade. What's more, he has a silver trowel, his trophy for being the NSW/ACT winner.
So all that digging bling, not to mention decades of nurturing life from the soil, has made this mild-mannered 79-year-old Newcastle's own celebrity gardener.
"I don't feel like a celebrity gardener," Le Messurier laughs. "I just feel like I'm someone who has done something that I've loved doing. And I've got a result."
GARDENING has been part of John Le Messurier's life since he was a child.
Growing up in Dubbo, he first plunged his hands into the soil when he was eight. It was an act of necessity. To help put food on the family's table, young John planted vegetables.
"Somehow I got into pushing seeds into the ground, and I loved it," he recalls.
With those early plantings came the first lessons about the challenges of gardening. Mice and locusts stripped the boy's vegetable patch.
"There can be frustrations and disappointments, but you've got to accept that and move on, and learn," Le Messurier says. "It's a non-stop learning thing, gardening."
John Le Messurier's recollections of his early life bloom with plants and trees. They are marker posts through his past.
He remembers visiting his fettler father at a railway workers' camp outside Cobar and being fascinated by the mallee trees.
He learnt about plants from a curator at Dubbo's Victoria Park, who took John under his wing after he caught the boy scooping a carp out of a pond.
When he was about 10, John lived with his aunt and uncle at Mount Wilson in the Blue Mountains. The boy could wander in some magnificent gardens.
His uncle was the gardener at a grand old home, Sefton Hall, which had been built for a Sydney retail king, Henry Marcus Clark, and his family. Next door was another striking property, owned by author Peter Valder - "he was a gardening guru" - and across the road was a Victorian mansion, Dennarque, which had been built by one of the early captains of business in Newcastle, Edward Merewether, as a summer retreat.
Little did the boy know as he explored Dennarque's grounds that one day he would have a role in creating beautiful gardens in Newcastle. Those ramblings through the gardens of Mount Wilson had a profound impact on Le Messurier.
"Just seeing the beauty, the different species, because most of them were introduced species; in that climate, they could copy England," Le Messurier says. "That was a learning experience."
The family moved to Newcastle when John was 14. In the city of steel and coal, he would really get his hands dirty, helping make his home and community more beautiful.
WITH Spring approaching, I ask John Le Messurier to devise a list of his favourite gardens in the Newcastle and Lake Macquarie area.
The plan was to tour some beautiful places with the Gardener of the Year.
It began as a long list: "The trimming was the hardest, because I get enjoyment out of so many gardens."
But the secateurs have come out, and the list has been pruned to six gardens.
Each of these gardens says something about what we have in our local landscape, and what John Le Messurier has nurtured in his soul.
Civic Park, Newcastle
FROM Civic Park, John Le Messurier has a direct view to his past.
"I was up there, in that window," he says, pointing to City Hall. "Then across to the round house."
For 40 years, John Le Messurier worked for Newcastle City Council. He began in 1959 as a trainee health inspector and retired in 1999 as the deputy director of environmental management.
One constant threaded through his career was this park.
"I looked out on it from my window up there," Le Messurier says. "It was probably a lot of lunchtimes here, meeting my family.
"What I like about here is you've got this axis that goes from the tower of City Hall to the cultural centre. This park brings a focus to the cultural scene here, and the city administration scene as well."
Le Messurier guides me to the war memorial grove in the park's south-east corner.
"It was conceived and put into place by three Newcastle garden clubs," explains Le Messurier of the grove's construction in 1961. "We could do with more of that in Newcastle."
He points out there is a mix of native and introduced species around the grove.
"That's a pine, presumably from Lone Pine," he says of a tree standing sentinel close to a small waterfall. It is the Legacy Tree, honouring "departed comrades", and it is traced back to the original Lone Pine on the Gallipoli peninsula.
"This is significant," Le Messurier says, touching the needles gently. "It is so great to have that here. It is so precious."
Back out in the park, we stand under one of the massive old fig trees, their tangle of branches arcing over us: "Instead of looking straight out, I like looking up. You can see wildlife, birds, parrots, wattle birds..."
The skyward view rouses memories for John Le Messurier of climbing trees as a kid. He would build a platform up in the canopy, creating his own escape in the trees, munching on fruit picked down near the river.
His perspective returns to earth, and to those central garden beds filled with blooming annuals. A team of council horticulturalists is weeding and 'deadheading' in the beds.
"When you look at these flowers, there's a hand of love that goes into those from the gardeners," he murmurs.
John introduces himself, and three of the horticulturalists gather around to offer congratulations, and to hold the golden spade.
"I'd be be swinging it around, carrying it around on my shoulder!," says Rachel Weightman, who is only a few weeks away from finishing her apprenticeship.
The horticulturalists are aware that these gardens are about not just flowers but a sense of community.
"It's really lovely to see people enjoy the park, when the flowers are out, photos being taken," says Josh Hawkins.
"And kids squealing when they see the flowers," adds Weightman.
The team members planted these annuals in May, ready for a winter display, and they will do the same again in November.
"The best part of the job is you always see a result," says Hawkins. "I love it."
As we walk away, John Le Messurier says how much he admires the work of the gardening teams.
"I'm a self-taught gardener," he says.
"I probably wish I was a horticulturalist. If I had my time again, I think I'd like that."
King Edward Park, The Hill
John Le Messurier stands on the crest of King Edward Park, beneath a palm tree, and looks down the grassy slope, which wanders into the shadows of a grove of Norfolk Island pines.
"This is a heritage place," he says.
Perched above the city, these 15 hectares have been a recreational reserve since the 1860s.
In 1890, artist and designer Alfred Sharp won a competition to landscape the Hill Reserve into a park that some in the city hoped would also reshape the way Newcastle was viewed.
"Before long the reproach of Newcastle - that of being a community totally blind to natural beauty and perfectly indifferent to the squalor of their surroundings - will be done away with, and that we will be able to point proudly to our parks in disproof of it," the Newcastle Morning Herald said in 1890.
The park, which was named after King Edward VII in 1911, has flourished to be a source of pride for Novocastrians, including for the Le Messurier family.
"For Carols by Candlelight, we'd sit up under the trees near the road, and every time I'd look up and say, 'This is so beautiful'," he says.
"Looking across at the pine trees, that beautiful setting. It would be nothing without the pine trees."
Le Messurier loves the Norfolk Island pines. He estimates the oldest trees in the grove could have been here for a century. And yet, in the face of time and the elements, they stand firm.
"I just like the symmetry of them," he says.
He leans against one of the pines, touching the textured bark: "It feels good to me."
We wander down the slope to the lawn that holds the historic rotunda and then on to a sunken garden.
It is a stunning setting.
In the background, the steep slopes create a V-shape that cradles the sea. In the foreground are the Garside Gardens, cloistered behind a stone fence. The beds are mostly barren, waiting to be planted.
"This was first put in as a model garden," Le Messurier says, explaining it has been named after a former council colleague, Bob Garside, who was a parks supervisor.
John Le Messurier looks around in wonderment.
"Where else in Australia can you get a garden like this, in a gully, with the wildness of the sea behind, and the Norfolk Island pines, and annuals in this garden?"
Glenrock Scout Camp
For John Le Messurier, this camp nestled by Glenrock Lagoon and only a few hundred metres from the sea has helped him grow.
He used to visit as a Scout and was involved in leadership courses here.
Yet in the 1960s and early 1970s, he realised the camp's environment was in dire need of help. The site bore the scars of industrial history. A coal mine had operated a little further up the valley, and a train line had run by the lagoon.
On the Scout camp land were the remnants of a coal dump, ash scraped from the locomotives was dumped along the lagoon's edge, and the area had been all but stripped of vegetation.
"I just saw we had to do something here, I had the feeling," recalls Le Messurier. "This area used to have a dry woodland and rainforest species, and I thought, 'Surely we can bring this back'."
Yet others didn't share his belief: "What I'd often hear was, 'You'll never get anything to grow at Glenrock', "because it had been barren for 80 years, and it was seen by some that it was an impossible thing to do. But I don't mind a challenge."
In 1976, Le Messurier began his green odyssey at the camp, clearing weeds, improving the soil, and planting native species, most of them donated. It took a few years, with Le Messurier hand-watering the plants after work and on weekends, but he gradually noticed change.
Now the six-hectare property has 28 gardens. Le Messurier isn't sure exactly how many plants he has put in - "thousands and thousands" - and he hasn't kept notes on everything.
But the story of the site's transformation is told in the plants themselves.
As we walk along the lagoon's edge, listening to the breeze in the casuarinas, Le Messurier explains, "All of this was weed-infested, so we planted she-oak trees to reinforce the banks."
The gardener's eyes bloom at the sight of a bird: "There's a wren over there!"
"They follow me around, looking for anything edible in the mulch, when I've been moving it."
The birds, he explains, are helping bring new plantings, via dropped seeds, to the camp.
"We're getting rainforest plants coming up on their own," he says.
"So in time, and I hope I'm around to see it, this will become a littoral rainforest. I may have to live for another 30 years. I'm trying!"
John Le Messurier is planting for the future. Near an amenities block is a newly established garden, created with $200 donated by a woman who wanted to congratulate and encourage the Gardener of the Year.
Since his win, more people have been coming to Glenrock, seeking out Le Messurier and his gardens.
As a result, he is keenly aware that the camp's gardens provide not just beauty but education.
He has placed hundreds of hand-painted tags in the soil, identifying the plants. For the garden that won him the award, John Le Messurier wants to show even more care. To him, that's more important than a golden spade.
"I'm trying to give it all the care I can, because all of those plants are precious to me, and they've all got a role to play here.
"And if people talk about here, it may give encouragement to somebody else ... in taking on a challenge near them."
And that is what happened with a drainage embankment in Eleebana.
Eleebana Residences
In 2017, when the inhabitants of the Eleebana Residences noticed parts of the bank just behind their back fence was crumbling and washing away, they knew they had to do something to stop the erosion.
And they knew just the man to help them.
One of the residents of the over-55s villa complex volunteered each Thursday at Glenrock Scout Camp, so he approached John Le Messurier.
"John came and looked at it in its worst stage and gave us some ideas," recalls Steve Lott who, with wife Nancy, has spearheaded the regeneration of the embankment.
"It was ugly, it wasn't a garden," John Le Messurier recalls.
As preparation, the Lotts looked at what Le Messurier had done at Glenrock.
"It's amazing," says Nancy Lott. "He showed us the native gardens on the slope."
Inspired and armed with Le Messurier's advice, Nancy and Steve Lott, along with a group of volunteers from Eleebana Residences, got to work.
They slashed the grass and hacked out the weeds. They installed sleepers and environmental matting to stabilise the bank and planted more than 150 native species, ranging from groundcover varieties to small trees, along a 200-metre stretch of the drain, which carries overflow to a local creek.
Two years on, John Le Messurier has returned to see a vastly changed landscape - and to show why he has chosen this as one of his favourite gardens.
"It's amazing to see what it was like before, and what it is now; that's what gardening is all about," he says to the Lotts, as they guide him along the lip of the bank.
"This is an example of getting something going. You've got a corridor of green, and that's important for wildlife. I think it's a tremendous effort.
"Another two years, and it'll be a dazzler!"
Hunter Wetlands Centre, Shortland
AT the same time John Le Messurier was spearheading a green revolution at the Glenrock Scout Camp, Doctor Paddy Lightfoot was helping convert a former dump and sports grounds at Shortland into the renowned Hunter Wetlands Centre.
Just like John Le Messurier, Paddy Lightfoot was recognised with an ABC gardening award, receiving a "green thumb" trophy for being a competition runner-up in 1999.
Lightfoot refers to himself as a "combo": "I'm an environmentalist and a gardener."
More than being landscape changers and award winners, Lightfoot and Le Messurier are long-time friends.
So when Le Messurier nominates the Hunter Wetlands Centre Australia as one of his favourite gardens, he suggests Lightfoot be our guide.
Lightfoot has volunteered here for about 37 years, since the outset of the journey to rejuvenate these 43 hectares.
"It's amazing, when you sat here before, you'd see the playing fields and just all the traffic [on Sandgate Road]," Lightfoot recalls. "Now you can't see a thing."
The outside world lies behind thick curtains of vegetation and is muffled by the calls of some of the 240 species of birds that can be found at the wetlands.
Paddy Lightfoot is aware all this change is appreciated beyond the centre's perimeter.
He says that in the past, some nearby residents complained about the "swamps" attracting mosquitoes; now, when they are selling their homes, they often advertise "wetlands views".
As he takes us to the nursery, Paddy Lightfoot explains more than 350,000 native plants have been placed on the site. In the early days, "we didn't steal, but we had to beg and borrow plants".
When he sees the thousands of young plants, Le Messurier remarks, "I never knew this nursery was here, otherwise I would have said, 'Let's go to the nursery!'."
From regenerating a rainforest area to replanting a melaleuca swamp, the teams of volunteers have brought back natural life and created new gardens.
We arrive at the bush tucker garden, which Lightfoot says is "to help people understand the way Indigenous people have used the environment".
The garden is filled with several thousand plants, which have been traditionally used for food, medicines, and for making items, such as bags.
While he munches on a finger lime that his friend has picked for him, John Le Messurier explains what he loves about this garden.
"I think it's a learning experience, going back to the First Peoples," he says. "It encourages people to take more notice."
In turn, Lightfoot explains what he likes about the man with the golden spade.
"I think he's a marvellous gardener," Paddy Lightfoot says.
"He's changed a degraded mining site into an Australian environment, for people, animals and birds."
Le Messurier Home, Redhead
After 43 years of gardening at Glenrock, John Le Messurier would be forgiven for keeping his hands clean at home.
But home is about his wife, Pam, the three daughters they raised here - and the garden they have created.
"I started here before I went to Glenrock," Le Messurier says.
In 1969, he and Pam built their home on Redhead Bluff. The site offered not just stunning views but a host of challenges for a garden: salt air, strong winds and sandy soil.
Once again, Le Messurier overcame the challenges. He improved the soil, using sewage sludge, and he gradually created the garden.
He also provided plants with a new home at Redhead, including a "bonsai" Moreton Bay fig bursting out of a pot. He had collected the seeds from a stricken fig on Kooragang many years ago.
Some of what is grown here provides new plants for Glenrock. Pam Le Messurier, who married John in 1966, is used to the tight connection between the two gardens.
"Glenrock has been part of our life," she says.
"In the beginning, he didn't know what would happen there. It's just been a journey of experimenting, it's a really nice thing to look at, and it's a wonderful legacy to leave."
No matter where they go, visiting parks and gardens near and far, it all comes back to one space.
"As Pam would tell you, it's always, 'That would look nice at Glenrock!'," Le Messurier laughs.
While Glenrock may be John's work, Redhead has been a shared project. Pam has dozens of succulents in pots.
The garden, which is modest in scale, is an ongoing project. Four years ago, they filled in the backyard swimming pool to create a lawn and gain more ground for plants.
Le Messurier points to a bench where he and Pam have their coffee each morning, and where "Costa" sat, after the TV star made a surprise visit to their home to present John with his spade.
With their garden, the Le Messuriers have created both a haven and a reflection of their personalities and passions.
"It's just an expression of who we are," says Pam Le Messurier. "And it's part of what we do to make ourselves happy."
HAVING been guided around the six gardens, I ask John Le Messurier which is his favourite. He doesn't hesitate to answer. Glenrock Scout Camp.
"I think my heart was in it so much," he says. "It's got my hand on it, I think, and I've been allowed to go ahead there."
The 2018 Gardener of the Year's advice to anyone embarking on their own adventures with plants is, "To talk to as many people as you can, visit nurseries, read".
"I'm probably trying to be an unqualified landscape architect," Le Messurier says.
"I read and I think, 'Those colours would look nice'. It's all a learning experience. I never stop learning. I want to know more and more about the plants."
Read more: Glenrock - a green jewel in the city.
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