MICKEY ROBERTSON

Music: Unterm Balcon Serenade,
Op. 78 by Richard Wüerst
Via Musopen.

MICKEY ROBERTSON

GARDENER

Camden, NSW

I had to choose “gardener” in the title above, but Mickey is a real “slashy”, she’s an interior designer, an inventive and brilliant cook, and a master gardener. I met her when I photographed and filmed one of her legendary gardening workshops. She is charm incarnated, chic but not snob, ultra talented but very approachable. I adore her responses to my interview. Read More…

A few photos from the day…

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Getting to know Mickey:

@glenmorehouse | glenmorehouse.com.au

INTERVIEW

Because I have a passion for documenting life, and particularly people’s life, I take photos and I film but I also like to talk, to know more about people I admire. I have loved interviewing Mickey. I hope you enjoy reading her answers as much as I did.

Oh that’s a good one! My pre-primary school headmistress called me Mickey for some reason. To be honest I didn’t much like it then (and was petrified of her!) aged 5, 6, 7… (my real name is Michelle which absolutely no-one but my oldest friend’s mother calls me!) but Mickey resurfaced when I went to live in London age 20… and keen to leave my old self behind and embark on new adventures, it stuck.
I was born and grew up in Sydney. When I was a child, my parents loved an annual family outing to Camden, usually in the autumn to see the vibrant leaf colour of the trees turning. In those days it was quite a drive, and how I loved the (then) laneways and hedged backroads… the landscape seemed enchanting to me. We’d always have afternoon tea at the Camden Valley Inn (scones, jam and cream!) and I’d quickly be off my seat to race to a swing in the garden… all sticky face and fingers! That swing faced the direction of Glenmore… and little did I know that one day….
We speak English. How I wish I had another language!! I have a smattering of schoolgirl French but I would love to be fluent…
Flo….what a question!!!!
My days are so disjointed…and yet…
Priority for each day is to ensure the vegetables in the kitchen garden are nurtured. Which makes me a gardener first thing in the morning!
Next, I attend to emails…which may be event, workshop or interior design related… so I skip between event organiser and the myriad details that space involves, event dreamer-upper – the creative part, communicator and writer… I spend an awful lot of time at my desk tap-tapping… whether as correspondent or writer.
Then I may have an interiors project on the go… which could involve any subject from plumbing to lighting to bricks & mortar, paint & wallpaper, to textiles, furniture, ceramics, antiques, rugs… or just where a stone tread might fall in a grass path (recent job!). So I’m an interior designer.
I might be menu-planning and or cooking for an event. So I’m a cook. Or garden planning… as kitchen gardener I must provide for the house… as ornamental gardener I must make sure all is cared for and nurtured in timely fashion. So back to being a gardener.
As event organiser… I spend a lot of time moving furniture… I wish I could spend more time on the pretties… but they are always last minute, utterly spontaneous… and only work because with my gardening hat on, I’ve been sure to ensure a bounty with which to play! I could spend hours talking you through the thrill of event lead-up!
Basically… I live on constant deadline, fulfilling all that’s expected by everyone, across every topic.
Oh and I left out the website (also requires nurture) and social media…photography and little posts… they’re always done on the run!
Hmmm… early on, I’d say I was very drawn to the Dutch Master Still Life paintings… I have always adored detail and somehow they felt like the ultimate: fruit, flowers, bugs and balance, colour, texture, depth and mood… you can almost smell them.
I’m a romantic and was also drawn to the Impressionist period… interiors to transport via dishevelled beds and filmy curtains catching a breath of air on a sultry afternoon to a hot landscape… such paintings were impactful on the young me.
These days… I always seem to be hoping for a Queenie McKenzie!
Not exactly! I did know from very early on that I loved gardens…their paths, gates, hiding places…or just the freedom to roam. But no…in fact I’d say I had no intention as a child of becoming a gardener. If only I’d known…and perhaps, this has been my biggest lesson. I wanted a garden (but that was some far-off, almost unlikely dream…I didn’t think I’d actually have one!). But when I found myself here…well…the only way to have one was to make one. And so for the first time I plunged my hands into the soil…as well as reading and absorbing information that previously I’d had no real reason to pursue. But tasked with the possibility, indeed the need…I took to it with fervour and purpose and have never looked back.
It all began a long time ago, when one of the first crazy ideas I yearned for (having found myself, quite unintentionally here) was a small lavender farm! Still fresh from the early days of our relationship and subsequent marriage in England…when pottering in Europe was not such a big deal and lavender fields of Provence still loomed like magic in my young eyes…this frivolity came to an end when I asked a Sydney florist if she would like some bunches of lavender (the first thing I’d planted) to which she said yes. An entire afternoon picking, stripping, bunching and tying later…for $25 in return…made me realise this was not a likely pathway at that time!
While the idea of ‘long rows' somewhere here was always at the back of my mind, I’d parked it…too hard, lack of water, lack of time, more effort…all the negatives. And I thought I’d completed the garden…especially once the book came out.
But there was another concept that had also lain unfulfilled in all those years…that of capturing the essence of the garden in a bottle! Oh to capture that heady scent of orange blossom on a spring breeze; the heat-haze atmosphere of lavender on a summer’s day, the delightful lightness of rose geranium when pressed betweenyour fingers…etc!
So….to answer your question, a few years ago these two ideas cross-pollinated! I realised if I didn’t take the opportunity to lay out a ‘field of flowers’ it would be the thing I would regret …and at the same time I set to and learned the time-honoured process of capturing botanical water (sometimes a little essential oil) but for me it’s the water…on a traditional copper alembic still.
The result is…I have a field of flowers which I can now share…peeps can come to pick and harvest and revel in the beauty, the odour, aroma, the magic of it all…distill with me…which is a magical experience…and/or…they can buy little bottles of pure aromatic botanical water captured from nothing but the pure essence of botanicals, grown in the earth I nurture, with the sun and water that befall us.
What was perhaps my greatest extravagance…has led to the absolute transportation of others into intoxicating moments delight!
Gardening…especially when there’s no-one else here and I can continue from dawn to dusk in my own little world! Hands busy, mind free to roam…
It’s another one of those questions Flo…and I think you’ve hit on something that I often question of myself and admire in others…I feel so often like a ‘jack of all trades, master of none’. Everything I do makes me…me. And everything I do is pretty much self-taught…through research, reading, putting into practice. Even studying interior design in London was broad spectrum as it covers such a wide range of specialty areas. The moment that changed everything…in honesty…was probably meeting Larry…he challenged me to work out what I really wanted to do…and he’s always supported my often bonkers ideas. What I do today is not sensible but it brings me fulfilment and does seem to engage and inspire others. Each topic I bring to share here has substance that I hope encourages others to explore further…opening pathways to further intrigue and understanding or them, as well as for me.
Living here! I did not grow up with ‘space’. I was really quite nervous when we first came here but now I would find it difficult to live any other way.
Love…is what the world needs now….
To nurture, to encourage, to be honest.
And the other value is authenticity…beyond your three!
Sea shells since very young…but I try not to now.
Little terracotta pots. Even better…I fill tiny terracotta pots with tiny seashells!
Seeds…my seedbank is probably the most valuable thing I own…it holds the possibility of growing next season’s food and each and every seed is a thing of beauty. It’s constantly evolving, being used and replaced.
Textiles…myriad textiles and leftover scraps and selvedge edges.
Baskets!
Soap…for the soap itself as much for likely exquisite wrapping and box…and for the perfume those enchanting boxes lend to my linen cupboard.
Ceramics
Magazines and wads of tear sheets from too long ago!
I would collect paintings…if I could…
My house is full of them! Every one tells a story…but probably hand-written notes from my girls…they tell the most important story of all.
How often do I say…I could just live on this and this alone….????
Last weekend Danielle Alvarez made zucchini flower fritters and I thought I’d died and gone to heaven! They were beyond…..
Probably the favourite thing I make is our regular Sunday evening supper of kedgeree…it’s never the same – I just shake it all together and cross my fingers I haven’t been too heavy handed with the curry and turmeric…but that rice is so nourishing after absorbing the chicken broth, the chunks of salmon, the boiled eggs, lemon juice, saffron and threaded through with wilted leaves from the garden…scattered with little amaranth leaves and chive flowers in season…now I’m hungry!
I don’t get to read anywhere near as much as I’d like. One day (I may be very old annoyingly!) I’m going to sit like a blob and read everything I’ve missed out on! But a friend gave me ‘Elizabeth and her German Garden’ (Elizabeth von Arnim) and it made me laugh out loud...I adored it! On another note altogether, Dominique Roques’ ‘In Search of Perfume’ because my oh my….the scent trail I’ve been on these last years has been oh so engaging and I love his writing and parts of this book have literally given me goosebumps…I think it’s tapped into more for me…perhaps to ancestral roots because there’s something unexplainable in one chapter in particular…
I haven’t finished…but The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem. I began watching when L was away and he doesn’t have time to binge catch-up…so I need him to go away again!
Rarely get there so afraid I’m a small screen girl these days. If I lived in the big smoke I’d be a regular…but I know I miss out on a lot…swings and roundabouts…some things have just gotta give…
Nup…youngest daughter writes so I often have her experiments going round and round in my head!
Actually…I’m inclined not to put peeps on pedestals….there are just so many incredibly talented peeps…absolute masters at what they do…I’m happy to admire them all.
An old school friend of mine seems to be painting little seascapes that are enchanting….I haven’t yet seen one in real life but I have a feeling I could become obsessed…
It was once a question I’d have rambled on and on about…but I have a funny feeling it’s the earth beneath my feet….
Well…I’ve been ticking them off at a rate of knots and….it’s time perhaps to dream the next one up!

It will of course continue in the framework (and hopefully expand beyond to explore further viewpoints) of soil, seasonal organic produce, food, nutrition and the cycle that unites them, alongside the continued journey of capturing scent…
The pure essence of the garden…these are at the core of projects and my intent is to continue and extend them...
I believe regenerative agriculture…those who are practicing it, caring, for, nurturing and stewarding the land, and focussed on their soil are the people we most need to encourage right now…for the sake of the environment, the planet and our own health. Without farmers and growers with the needs of their soil at the top of their priority list, we will not have real, nutrient rich food to consume in order to maintain health and without regenerative farming practice, we will not heal the earth and ensure it can feed us into the future. I feel a responsibility to be a conduit in that arena…between those who are fully versed practitioners and those who don’t realise how this work, this enormous effort, affects their daily lives and the wider environment. As a gardener, not a farmer, I play a smaller role…but an impactful one in encouraging peeps to follow good, sensible, straightforward organic gardening practice…alongside beauty and bounty. And I think this is where there can be a disconnect. Too often we skim over the surface of things to appreciate the beauty, without understanding the substance that underpins it. We can have both. In fact, we can’t have one without the other. I also want to advocate for the teaching of more ‘gardeners’ rather than landscape garden designers. And a return to skills that require hands, not machines; mental health, women’s health…community health. And somewhere in this too lengthy spiel is the crux of my next exciting project!
Ooooh…and a long held ‘grain’ project for which I’ve done the groundwork! That one might be easier to pull off although I’ve been talking about it for years too…but I’ve laid the groundwork...
I need to replicate myself in order to keep up…anyone interested?!!