Leon Fink, the 82-year-old restaurateur and founder of the Fink Group, says everyone involved in gardening is "good-tempered, good-natured and patient".
You’ve spent most of your working life on urban pursuits: running the Fink group of high-end restaurants, plus hotels, theatres and bars. What sparked your passion for gardening?
I had a friend who had health problems. He decided to build a house on a block in Dural. I was in my late 30s and went up to help him plant a garden. From that point on, it became a passion of mine getting to know plants and the regions they came from.
Were your parents gardeners?
We had a garden but Dad was no good at it. We lived in Toorak, Melbourne and we had this pine tree, maybe a bunya or Norfolk pine, like the one I have here in this garden [in Clovelly, Sydney]. It had been there for about 70 years. When you climbed to the top of it you could see the whole of Melbourne.
You have land near the Victorian and NSW border. Tell me about it.
A few of us in the ’60s bought land down there. Arthur Boyd, Ken Myer, Philip Cox and Roy Grounds and myself. I’ve got about 200 acres. I’ve taken it from being a subsistence farm to forest landscape, planting thousands of indigenous trees. It’s an amazing place, spectacular. It’s near Eden and is called Khandallah (resting place of God). It’s got over one kilometre of river frontage and a view of the sea where the whaling industry once was. We’ve got three 19th-century buildings on the property. One was used as a transfer station for the local village cemetery that was another half a mile up the river on the other side.
What was the attraction of the land?
It was as far away as you could get from Melbourne or Sydney and away from development. I’ve done property development so I knew where to look. On the river frontage you can never have more than six homes. It means the river will have maximum chance to not be molested by overdevelopment.
What other gardens have you been involved with?
Many. I funded the Australian section of the Jerusalem Botanical Gardens. I took with me Craig Burton, one of the top NSW landscape designers. I had a magnificent master plan for those gardens that would have made them self-funding, self-sustaining, which was done by architects Bob Nation (now design director of Barangaroo) and Karl Fender. But I fell out with the mayor of Jerusalem so we just did the Australia section.
I have a friend who owns a couple of hundred acres near Scone, a stud farm, which had been stripped right back. I got him at a weak moment and persuaded him to re-establish the forest that once was there and plant 20,000 trees.
I helped establish a community vegetable garden here in Clovelly. It’s been going pretty consistently now for 12 to 15 years. When people are interested it really works nicely. Up there [pointing to the bushland above his beachfront property] it used to be all rubbish. But we’ve put in plants, watered and weeded, and then the council got involved.
What’s your favourite plant?
Bromeliads: the colours are amazing. They’re tough as old boots; if it’s dry they still survive.
What do you like about gardening?
It builds optimism. It’s nice being able to make things grow. Everywhere in the world you go there’s a botanical garden, you see the best of plants. Also, everyone who’s involved in gardening is good-tempered, good-natured and patient.
Do you have any favourite gardens?
The Royal Botanical Gardens in Sri Lanka just outside of Kandy. The gardens of Mount Wilson in the Blue Mountains are spectacular, especially Barry Byrne’s Bebeah. And Philip Cox has probably the greatest classic garden in the country. It’s amazing.
Do you have a golden rule for gardening?
Know your plants and your regions well before you bother with them, and just keep on doing it. It’s a fundamental premise of gardening that next year your garden is going to look better than it did this year. You’ve got to stay healthy so you can stick around and see what happens to it next year. See that Gymea? They take five to eight years before they flower, but I’m putting it in anyway.
The AFR Magazine Culinary issue is out on Friday, June 30 inside The Australian Financial Review.
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