Garden feature: The weed sisters

The weed sisters

Story by Winnie Pelz. Photography by Jason Porter.

Previous page and above: Jill Lieblich’s garden and home feature a fairly structured layout with beautiful stonework, a water feature, cascading wisteria vine, rose garden and orchard.

When you call yourselves The Weed Sisters, some good-natured ribbing is perhaps to be expected. Some have called them the weird sisters. Others have queried whether it eludes to a more elicit pastime. But this name does what it says on the label.

The Weed Sisters are all about weeding – pulling out those unwanted interlopers that grow with great vigour and abundance in your garden – and sharing in the convivial companionship that has grown among the sisters.

The four Weed Sisters are Jill Lieblich, Sue Caporn-March, Katerina Bickford and Tracey Bishop. All live in and around the McLaren Vale–Willunga region and all have wonderful gardens that still, despite their efforts over the last ten years, have energetic weeds. >

Above: Katerina Bickford and her husband Rob at their beautiful McLaren Vale home and garden.

The genesis of The Weed Sisters goes back to one of Tracey’s earlier ventures, Sweettart, a renowned local pastry business. Jill was part of the Tarts team and a work-based friendship between the two expanded into walking and gardening together. So when both women built new homes they naturally turned to each other for help in planting out and developing their new gardens.

Sue joined next. Her garden dates back forty years and she joined Tracey and Jill at a time she describes as ‘a testing crossroads’ as she questioned the direction of her garden and her future. For Sue, becoming part of the group was a ‘godsend’ and gave her a new focus and energy as well as clarifying her direction in life. Katerina completed the quartet six years ago and they have met every Thursday since, taking turns to work in each other’s gardens. Katerina is the collector of unusual plants in the group and she brings a great knowledge of botanical detail and the history of plants, as well as her gentle sense of humour. Jill likes digging and hedging, a skill shared by Tracey, who has a love of machinery (except chainsaws!) and is the irrigation champion of the group. Sue, a gardening generalist, has become the ‘weeding queen’ and also contributes another invaluable asset from time to time – her husband – who builds beautiful dry-stone walls.

Sue Caporn-March’s garden features Willunga slate stonework by her husband Doug, garden sculpture, water feature and a tame crow who visits daily. Bottom left: Jill Lieblich, Tracey Bishop, and Sue Caporn-March having their weekly catch up formed around gardening, friendship and freshly home-baked sweets and savouries.

These four women have found their perfect gardening equilibrium with their particular mix of skills and personalities and so they’ve decided not to expand their number any further, though they have inspired other gardening groups to follow their weed-blazing ways. The limited membership means that once a month, each sister’s garden gets the benefit of the four women’s shared effort and equally the shared joy of seeing their gardens grow.

Their gardens are diverse, in age, size, scope and style. Jill has a twenty-acre property, with two acres of ‘tough ornamental garden’ protected by hedges and beautiful stone walls. There are deciduous trees, fruit trees, a vegetable garden and a magical wisteria arbour that sees an abundance of white and lavender blooms cascading from a verandah through spring and summer.

Sue’s garden reaches down a valley for some ten acres, with stone walls terracing the slope and creating ‘rooms’ for vegetable gardens, magnificent mature trees and ornamental rambling plants for colour and texture. A crow has become a bold gardening companion and enjoys sharing (stealing?) morning teas.

Above: Tracey Bishop’s stepped garden combines formal elements like hedging and stone and an arbor with rambling roses, and cascading ground-covers.

house, the garden is the most formal of the group in design and execution. Designed by Adelaide landscape designer Caroline Dawes with stonework by local stonemason Rick Wheatley, the steep slope features clipped hedges of Japanese Box, Euonymous and Teucrium to offset the stone walls.

Katerina’s garden covers some two acres sloping down to the bank of the Breakneck Creek. The location of her house in the middle of the block creates four areas for four distinct gardens, including an area of native plants, one of fruit trees and one with abundant colourful roses. The diversity of the gardens enables each Weed Sister to provide varying suggestions and degrees of input. And their willingness to do so has grown as they’ve come to know each other better over the years. Now they’re able to make suggestions about planting and changes, with each member offering a different perspective. ‘We love the gardens, having watched them grow over the years and we lose ourselves in the pleasure of being outside in a beautiful environment,’ they say.

The Weed Sisters are not daunted by rain or cold or extreme heat. ‘What if the weather is really awful?’ I ask. They all grin: ‘We still meet...and then we drink coffee and eat cake. And tarts!’