Bush wonder
This patch of botanical bliss in the middle of West Coast farming country is a testament to what can be done when you give something a go – and find a real passion in the unknown.
Danna Kassebaum steps out from the century-old verandah surrounding her homestead and looks out across the property. Lambs bleat in the far-off distance and she apologises for the half-demolished shearing shed nearby, which she claims is a bit of an eyesore.
“There’s a new one coming that’ll allow for the shearing of about 4000 sheep,” Danna says. “There was a 100-year-old shed there before – it was full of character, but it was also full of white ants.”
In fact, Danna has nothing to apologise for with this beautiful little oasis she’s created, within the family’s much larger sheep farm, a stone’s throw from Kimba on Eyre Peninsula. Danna has lived in this blissful country patch for the past two decades – since marrying her husband, Nigel.
In that time, the pair have transformed the century-old homestead and dusty garden, bit by bit, and welcomed their four children into the home, during that time adding on an extension using reclaimed stone similar to the existing material.
Succulents feature heavily in the garden and Danna loves to experiment with growing them from cuttings.
“Our architect found a house in Port Lincoln that was being demolished and it had similar stone, so we salvaged it,” Danna says.
The garden surrounding this beautiful country home has been Danna’s labour of love for at least a decade. She started gardening more out of necessity than hobby after moving into the home, but her love for it has since flourished and the past five or so years have been a discovery of all things botanical.
“When we moved in, the garden had discarded carpet for weed control and mismatched pavers,” Danna says. “They just used whatever they had. It meant that, really, I could start from scratch because I had a blank canvas.”
While she didn’t possess a green thumb at this point, Danna had a vision.
“I wanted to come home to a place that really felt like home,” she says. “The garden was a disaster and I think it was more the soil. I thought if we just brought in good soil, then I could do whatever I like.”
So, in they trucked several loads of soil from their surrounding paddocks and got to work levelling it.
“I had a few different design changes working out what I liked, but I was just winging it,” she says. “I sort of just started with the border and worked my way in.”
The front garden has a homely cottage feel – a rough border of stones encircles Danna’s hard work. Variety upon variety of colourful blooms sit just within the border and then stretch across the verandah’s edge. There are white standard roses, dahlias, zinnias, salvias and plenty of cosmos, the self-seeding plants that grow so well here on Eyre Peninsula.
A vintage cupboard has been re-purposed as a striking display case for Danna’s plants and objects.
When Danna’s grandmother moved into a nursing home, Danna found a home for some of her plants in her own garden, including some irises. She has also found inventive ways to reclaim and recycle to keep the garden going beneath the verandah. There’s an old rusty gate door with dried flowers hanging from it.
Equally as rusted buckets have brilliant flashes of pink flowers growing from them. Iron garden statues sit atop worn benches. An old kitchen cupboard is flanked on either side by potted trees, while its shelves hold smaller pots with succulents.
Yet more pots and garden ornaments sit on a beautiful timber table with perfectly rustic white paint peeling from it. The found objects sit harmoniously together, each element thoughtfully placed in its spot.
The garden is allowed to run a little wild in parts and still looks balanced because the greater structure has been planned so well. While the front of the garden is all about those ornamentals, the back garden is an edible wonderland.
“I started the veggie patch during Covid when I had a lot of time to get out here in the garden,” Danna says.
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Edible patches in gardens, for the most part, are predominantly practical, the aesthetics either not considered, or an afterthought. But not in Danna’s garden. Through an archway and inside a fenced area, the veggie patch at any given time holds things such as lettuce, broccoli, carrots, beans, celery, capsicums, kale and all manner of herbs.
Danna Kassebaum has created a space in her Eyre Peninsula garden that is not only productive with herbs and veggies, but also filled with pops of floral colour and interspersed with garden ornaments and furniture.
Danna says she’ll let a lot of the produce die and drop their seeds. “It doesn’t look so good, but there’s a theory behind it. It’s a bit of fun to see what happens when you leave things. You can’t remember what it was sometimes, so it’s a bit of a surprise to see what things are when they come up.”
The soil Danna used when creating the garden needed a little nutrient boost, given it was simply paddock soil, so she’s started a worm farm. The garden beds have been decorated cleverly, with little iron plant signs and anything Danna finds to add a little interest.
“I had a basket and the bottom had fallen out, so I popped that in the garden and grew something out of it.”
Danna expertly balances a garden that looks as if it belongs to someone who enjoys toiling and experimenting outside, and a garden that’s made to be a place of beauty. In one corner is an old bench, stacked with empty little terracotta pots. On the shelf below, pots are filled with different varieties of succulents – one of Danna’s greatest passions in the garden.
Danna’s passion has led her to creating her garden wares business, ZoZo and Ace, which she runs out of warehouse-turned-retail space Workshop26 in Kimba. She started with Workshop26 prior to her current business, selling cakes, biscuits and slices.
“I’d cook all week and it’d sell out in a couple of hours,” she says. “I did that for a couple of years until I couldn’t do it anymore – it was hard work. But I saved up my takings and that’s what I started my little shop with.”
The front of the garden has a more formal feel, with lawn edged by roses and stone found on the property, all looking out to the paddocks and bush beyond.
Danna sells bird houses, decorative wrought iron, woodwork, baskets, flower presses, gardening tools and, of course plants – and certainly including succulents.
“I really enjoy doing the arrangements; it’s as if you’re creating a piece of art. I find it therapeutic.”
Danna’s garden is all about trial and error. A couple of succulents bear singe marks, so Danna’s grown some other plants over the top to shade them. There’s lots of propagation going on in the garden, as well as a little glasshouse for seeds. The next stage for Danna is nurturing a dahlia farm that she’s just started, with 70 different cultivars and about 200 tubers planted.
Bees are buzzing all around the garden – the endless blooms are very happily being pollinated. Danna has created a happy, peaceful place, but she rarely slows down to enjoy the spoils.
“I’ve sat out here a couple of times, but there’s always too much to do. I’ll see a weed somewhere and go and pull it out. If I’m not helping out on the farm, I’m usually out here. I’ll come out in the evening and put the sprinkler on while I work away.”
This article first appeared in the December 2024 issue of SALIFE magazine.
