A Day in the Garden with Sarah Curry
Our Day in the Garden series is a quiet glimpse into the lives, gardens, and rhythms of women who find joy, beauty, and purpose outdoors. It’s about slowing down long enough to appreciate not only the gardens themselves, but the people behind them — the rituals, the work, the seasons, and the stories woven through everyday life.
This month, we’re visiting Sarah Curry at “Majors Point” in Quandialla, Central West NSW, Sarah is a powerhouse and we’re thrilled to have her share her day.
Sarah is the co-owner of Major’s Mulch, producers of premium mulching pellets and complete compost, alongside a farm nursery growing hardy perennials and a garden design practice exclusively serving country properties. She’s also raising three children — Ted, Cate and Jimmy — on a working farm with her husband Josh, and still finds a way to appear at nearly every open garden in regional NSW. How she does it, we genuinely don’t know. But a day in her world makes it feel, briefly, possible.
5:45 AM — Slow Mornings on the Floodplain
At Majors Point, the day starts early. The light is still cool when Sarah’s already moving , this is life in a temperate semi-arid climate, where the seasons are uncompromising: low rainfall, hot dry summers, frosty winters, a fleeting week of Spring, and beautiful warm autumns with mornings that make every early start worth it.
For Sarah, gardening has always been about far more than plants. On a farm, the garden becomes a sanctuary, a cool, restful space that softens the landscape and creates a sense of home a sanctuary especially when the farming season is tough.
7:00 AM — Flowers Between the Veggies
One of Sarah’s favourite morning rituals is walking through the veggie garden on the way to the bus stop and clothesline. The garden was intentionally positioned between the garage, pergola, and washing line so it naturally becomes part of everyday life and can never be forgotten.
At this time of year, Zinnias spill colour throughout the vegetable beds, attracting bees and butterflies while bringing beauty to the practical rhythm of growing food.
Fresh bunches are regularly gathered for the house, adding colour and softness to daily life on the farm.
9:30 AM — Propagating Plants for the Nursery
Maintaining the garden also feeds directly into Sarah’s nursery work through Major’s Mulch. Hedge trimmings, divided perennials, and plant cuttings are carefully propagated and potted up to create hardy new plants for the nursery.
Living and gardening in such a challenging climate means every recommendation is grounded in firsthand experience. Sarah loves trialling new cultivars and experimenting with planting combinations, always searching for plants that can thrive beautifully in country conditions.
11:30 AM — Designing Country Gardens
Part of Sarah’s day is spent designing gardens for country homes and farms across regional Australia. Her approach is deeply considered: once the overall concept is agreed, she breaks the design into stages, making it genuinely manageable for clients who’ve always found “where do I start?” the hardest question to answer.
Each project arrives as a hand-drawn, hand-assembled booklet, planting plans, plant photographs, implementation timelines, equipment lists. It’s a remarkable amount of work, produced alongside everything else.
1:30 PM — A “Fine Large Day” in the Garden
The heart of the day is often spent outdoors mulching, composting, planting, digging, and weeding. The kind of work that leaves hands dirty, muscles aching, and spirits completely full.
These are the days Sarah regularly has, in between running the businesses, managing the nursery, raising the children, and designing everyone else’s gardens.
Her grandmother had a saying after a productive day outside: “we’ve had a fine large day,” words that still come to mind after long afternoons spent working in the garden.
5:30 PM — Evening Watering with Blondie, Stubby & Mary
As the light softens across the property, Sarah begins the evening watering rounds with Blondie, Stubby dog, and Mary cat faithfully following close behind.
SHOP SARAH'S TOOL BELT
Without an irrigation system and with the dam running low, watering is a hands-on process involving pumps, sprinklers, and constant movement throughout the garden. Although time consuming, it has become one of Sarah’s favourite parts of the day — a chance to properly walk through the garden and notice what’s flowering, changing, or quietly waking from winter dormancy.
This is also where her Le Sac becomes essential. With secateurs, gloves, hose fittings, phone, and AirPods tucked neatly into place, she can move easily through the garden without constantly searching for the tools she needs.
6:45 PM — Gathering Dinner from the Garden
Before heading inside for the evening, Sarah gathers herbs and vegetables fresh from the garden for dinner.
At the moment, miniature heirloom pumpkins are in abundance and tonight’s meal is pumpkin and rosemary risotto, baked and served inside the pumpkin shells themselves — simple, seasonal food grown and prepared with care.
Like many gardeners, Sarah laughs that she still hasn’t mastered planting the perfect quantity of everything. Some seasons bring gluts of one vegetable and not enough of another, but even that becomes part of the joy, creating opportunities to share fresh produce with neighbours and friends.
8:00 PM — Ending the Day at Home
One of the things Sarah loves most about gardening is witnessing how alive a garden truly is. Something is always changing, flowering, resting, surprising, or returning after winter.
Gardens, much like life, are never still.
And at Majors Point, the garden and the woman tending it are inseparable. Sarah will stop mid-watering to press a cutting into your hand, send you home with more pumpkins than you can carry, or detour across the property to show you something flowering she simply couldn’t not share. Her warmth is unmissable. So is her garden.
Follow Sarah for beautiful country garden inspiration, hardy plant knowledge, and a heartfelt glimpse into life and gardening on the land.
MORE FROM SARAH CURRY:
Sahra Curry’s 5 Hardy Perennials for Tough Country Gardens
