Interview Recording
Interview Transcript
Mary Dougan interviewed on 6 and 21 September 2006 by Roslyn Burge
Synopsis
Mary Dougan was a sprightly 104 when interviewed in September 2006 for the AGHS Oral History Collection.
Well known in garden circles, Mary described herself as ‘a joiner. That’s how I learnt about everything and met so many interesting people’. Indeed she was an early member of the Society for Growing Australian Plants and the Australian Garden History Society, joined the Garden Club of Australia and the Beecroft Garden Club in 1956, and was a foundation member of the Ikebana and Bonsai Society. She was also a member of the Royal Horticultural Society, the Scottish Rock Garden Club, the Alpine Garden Club and the American Rock Garden Club.
She exchanged seeds with people around the world, including Mr T. Sakata, President of the eponymous Japanese flower and seed breeding company, who wrote to her in 1967 within a month of her notice appearing in the Journal of the Royal Horticultural Society offering Clivia kewensis seeds. Mary loved cyclamen, with little flowers so much like butterflies, and her collection included cyclamen hederafolium grown from seeds sent to her by Dr Nathan Mutch of Pitt White.
Mary and her husband moved to Beecroft after WW2 and by the 1990s her garden was crowded with tall eucalypts over 22 m high, Spotted Gum, Black Tupelo and Ginkgo biloba, as well as small alpines and bulbs; which were her favourites because you had to get down on hands and knees to appreciate them.
After the death of her husband she studied at Ryde Horticultural College and later took a Bonsai course.
After Mary left her Beecroft garden in 1988 most of her glorious eucalypts were felled to stumps about 8 metres high, with the approval of Hornsby Council.
Reference
AGHS BRANCH CUTTINGS, June 2018, pp4-5 – Mary Dougan article
