AN AMAZING LADY AND HER GARDEN

Kitty Henry lived in an old house in Sandy Bay, Hobart. The house, "Ellington", situated in the "Golden Mile" of Hobart, Tasmania was surrounded by a wild and beautiful garden. It was shabby, yet exciting and mysterious within. One could ramble on from room to room and space to space, exploring the bookcases which stood in every odd corner, touching the exciting coloured vases, cracked and covered in dust. The unpainted walls, bare boards and stacks of gardening magazines and books, all added to the atmosphere of an Aladdin's Cave to a little girl of four years of age.

In the front hall, which only strangers used, was a porthole in the wall, which came off Joseph Conrad's ship and there was a fireplace that was surrounded by real Dutch tiles of beautiful Delft blue and soft green. Turning right on enetering through the main hall, one ended in the Library, a large, airy room, with bookshelves crammed with many volumes on all subjects. The walls, full of paintings and prints, were dominated by a large oil painting of Kitty, painted by L.Deschaineux, head of the art school of Hobart during the early years of this century. I have this painting now and it is simply titled "La Jardiniere". In it, Kitty stares pensively ahead, her strong chin exaggerated, her soft, brown eyes those of a young girl looking out rather doubtfully on the world. Her full lips are painted scarlet, the same shade as the Turkish fez that is capturing the long, black, wiry hair and she wears a turquoise blouse underneath a sky blue jacket.

Next to this painting hung another portrait by the same artist, now in the Tasmanian Art Gallery and Museum. Kitty is dressed in a black jumper and on close examination you can just discern a hole in the jumper. This is Kitty as you usually found her, dressed for the garden.

Kitty was a florist and a gardener. The years I knew her intimately were in the 1940s and 1950s. We had moved as a family from Sydney and my parents had rented a house, opposite Kitty and Papa Henry's.
Sometimes I would watch her dress for a Social function and, even as a little girl, I was fascinated at the transformation that took place. In a few moments, I would see Kitty as I knew her, a mannish figure dressed in old trousers and jumper, turn into a beautiful , exotic woman, as the butterfly emerges from the dry chrysalis.

Kitty never had the money to buy designer clothes and there was no hot water in the house, but she would appear from the bathroom, some wonderful material draped around her strong body, silver bangles with turquoise stones clasped onto her arms and a slash of scarlet lipstick on her mouth, her curly black hair brushed into a neat roll at the nape of her neck - and it was then she could have walked down the cat walk of any fashion parade. She would have a cigarette in her hand, the large square hands that she could not transform, the garden soil being ground into the cracks and with the nicotine stains from the inevitable cigarettes. Those were the honest hands of the full time gardener.

If Kitty wanted a change of exotic materials from which to fashion a dress, she thought nothing of asking for a loan of a length of material from your hanging curtains, as long as the colour was right and the velvet plush enough and you were a friend. She would take this length of material and without cutting it, would pin it here and there with an intriguing brooch or a safety pin. The dramatic flower created, she would have a last gulp from a tall glass of tea, from which she drank incessantly, then at last, she would be ready. There may be someone waiting to give her a lift, probably have been waiting for quite a while as Kitty never came in from the garden until too late. Excited and happy, Kitty would be off to the theatre or a social party. When you got to know Kitty well and became wiser, you would arrange to pick her up an hour earlier than your destination arrival time and now and again you would not arrive overly late. But she was always on time for the theatre, which she looked forward to with the excitement of a young girl, going to her first ball. And the cast would join Kitty and friends for an informal Sunday brunch and soak up the perfumes and the beauty of Kitty's wild garden

The sitting room and the library were reached by going through the Flower Room. This central area was the inner sanctum, the engine room, the Queen Bee's domain. Five doors led off the "Flower Room" - including the door to Kitty and Papa's sitting room, several wooden steps leading up to the ancient bathroom where Papa Henry had to light a wood heater for Kitty to have a bath, and an outside door to the garden, which was never closed, even in the deepest of a bitterly cold winter.

Standing on the wooden floor there would be huge bowls of flowers On one side there was a table covered in the tools of the trade, electric wire, wire cutters, chicken wire, scissors and glasses of cold, warm, or hot tea. On another wall, near the entrance to the flat, was an Huon Pine sideboard, the drawers filled with neatly rolled ribbons of every subtle hue and texture - best quality velvet, taffeta, moire silk. These were always kept in pristine order and had to be treated with deference. I am writing generally of the war years and I suspect exotic ribbons became hard to find as those years advanced, but Hobart had old fashioned shops where such luxuries had been stored in large amounts during the prewar years.


The haunting beauty of Kitty's floral creations became a legend in both the social and intellectual circles of Tasmania. It must have been very frustrating for Kitty to never have the means to buy the plants she needed to use in her floral arrangements, nor, indeed, the area of land in which to plant them in. But friends were always generous in gathering flowers from their gardens when Kitty called for help, bringing them around to the flower-room and staying to chat and help with the wiring, while they slowly froze to death.

Kitty dirtied her hands in most of the huge gardens surrounding the mansions of Sandy Bay, landscaping and suggesting to the wealthy owners which plants to buy and where to put them. She would plant them in their final place, mostly for no pecuniary reward - maybe a lunch thrown in or a cutting or two. Her reward was the excitement of the open purse for the purchase of exotic plants and designing wonderful terraces and flights of steps in Tasmania's soft sandstone, all the things she would have dearly loved to have in her own garden but could never afford.

Kitty was always poor and completely disorganised in the keeping of records and ledgers. I still have a vivid picture of a very smooth business man, visiting from "The Mainland", sitting in an overstuffed arm chair which was grubby but still lovely with its faded colours. He had pulled the chair as close to the open fire as possible, without actually sitting in the open hearth, and was pleading with Kitty to let him take her back with him to Sydney, where he would set her up as a florist and landscaper, manage her money and, he hinted, both he and Kitty would make an enormous amount of income. I recall Kitty laughing her full deep laugh, her brown skin reddening with a maiden's blush; and taking a gulp of black tea and a long drag from her cigarette, she "phoo-phooed" the idea. But at the same time, I also see her large brown hands nervously pushing the stray curls into the roll at the nape of her neck and a puzzled, wondering look in her deep brown eyes.

Kitty's garden was dominated by a huge walnut tree and as children we were always delighted to help pick the sweet walnuts that stained our fingers black for many weeks. In the outshed-come-laundry, where water was boiled in a huge copper for the wash, there were vast containers filled with walnuts drying out and these were a non-ending source of vitamins to us children calling to "just see" after school.

To stroll through Kitty's garden was like walking through layers of plants. The wilderness was always untidy, Kitty would not allow anyone "loose" in the garden for fear they may dig up one of her precious bulbs, as indeed, would have been very easy in such a crowded wilderness of beauty. Jardinieres, garden pots and stone horse troughs stood in every part of the garden and sometimes pots stood on other larger pots. They were all crammed full of exotic plants and bulbs. Planted in the earth were huge banks of Hydrangeas which flowered with an intense blue and up another path rambled roses and underneath, if the ground was free of a beautiful pot, sheets of Sternbergia lutea, or Cyclamen Neapolitum or perhaps a huge clump of Hosta Sieboldiana. Kitty loved roses, particularly those of a rich, deep red which blended so beautifully with her luxurious ribbons, but I think her greatest love of all were the lilies. The various layers of garden pots were crammed with the most wonderful lilies and Kitty would always take you to see them, for you to breathe in their perfume or to just stand and gaze on them in wonder.

The huge hydrangea bushes which grew under the walnut tree and mulberry tree, were fed with the mineral-rich, red soil that could only be obtained from the Great Lakes area in the centre of Tasmania. The Hydro Electric Commission was beginning to harness the waters of these lakes, and Kitty would plead with my father, who was Chief Electrical Engineer of the Hydro, to bring her back a sugar-bag full of the soil from his many trips to the area. How surprised those European engineers, dressed in their Saville Road suits, and travelling with my father to discuss estimates for multimillion pound plans for the Hydro, must have been when my father stopped the car and got out of the boot the sugar-bags and a shovel. It is remarkable how many of these men would take off their tailored jackets, roll up their sleeves, get stuck into the digging, and become homesick for their Sussex gardens.


Kitty often used hydrangea heads in her floral decorations, particularly when they had faded to that unique green-blue shade that somehow always reminded me of the story of the "Forsaken Mermaid". When my sister married, my other sister and I were bridesmaids and we wore splendid flame-coloured ball gowns of many layers of shifting hues. Kitty did all the flowers, for the Cathedral, for parents' homes and for the bridal parties. The circlets we wore around our heads of individual hydrangea flowers and hellebores orientalis flowers, all wired and very carefully chosen to be the right cool sea green shade and the bouquets of repeating hydrangeas and white hyacinths were a marvellous foil to the rather hot and daring shade of our gowns.

Kitty landscaped many of the old, large gardens in Hobart and the substantial farming properties throughout Tasmania. She loved the countryside and would often go and stay in one of the mansions and spend the weekend advising and planting. When actually commissioned to do garden designing, her own particular style was a mixture of Edna Walling and Gertrude Jekyll. She dearly loved sandstone for steps and terraces and used the rocks and boulders that were so readily available in mountainous Tasmania.

If you visit these gardens today and some of those old mansions, it is very easy to feel the presence of Kitty, to know that part of the history of the property is Kitty with her hands buried in the earth, choosing the plants and planting them lovingly in the perfect place. The choice of shrubs and perennials, the formation of a flight of steps, or the subtle terracing is a haunting reminder that "Kitty has been here".

Unfortunately, in Sandy Bay, Hobart, where Kitty did most of her landscaping, many of the old homes have disappeared and their gardens are subdivided into very small, but expensive blocks.
It is hard to imagine Kitty living in these times. She died, prematurely, when aged in her early sixties, from Bright's Disease. Perhaps it was the endless tall glasses of tea that were dotted all over the garden that she drank from as she moved from corner to corner, seeking that one flower of just the right, subtle hue.....The tea always gulped down, no matter if it was hot, cold or warm. Maybe it was the many cigarettes; or maybe it was just to be. Kitty, who would have been saved from this disease if she lived today, left so early the rapidly changing world.

But somehow, I cannot place Kitty in the gardening world of the Seventies onwards. Would she have gone to a College and learnt the correct way of things and would that have made her happy? Or would that have changed her almost child like wonder at the beauty of things? Perhaps it would have killed her talent which had that quality of innocence and simplicity and the joyousness of "good taste".

What I do know is that all the plants that are available now in Tasmania [as they were not in Kitty's time] would have excited her very much. And yet, somehow, Kitty was able to make beautiful gardens and wonderful flower arrangements using all the plants that our first settlers wanted to see growing around their homes, the trees and shrubs that reminded them of the "Old Country".

I will finish with an anecdote that involved me when I was a little girl of eight or nine. We were poking around Kitty's garden, my mother was there and a mutual friend of my mother and Kitty's. This gentleman was a Noel Coward type of chap, with a barbed sense of humour and was a frequent visitor at Kitty's. Maybe it was the sight of Kitty's beautiful flowers and the perfume wafting through the garden that turned my young thoughts to the birds and the bees. "Kitty," I asked, "Why don't you and Linus get married?"

"And what then?" Linus. drawled in a quite friendly voice, "What would happen then, my dear child? What if we had any children? Kitty would heel them in and forget where she'd put 'em!

When Kitty died, her house and garden were bulldozed to make room for flats.

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