Natasha Morgan

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Daylesford, VIC
Natasha Morgan

Lifelong Gardener | Landscape Architect | Author | Educator

Growing, designing and teaching a more beautiful, abundant life. Welcome.

Workshops, writing and seasonal inspiration from Daylesford, Victoria.

📖 Pre-order my first book — link below. Natasha Morgan, an award-winning landscape architect, is a multidisciplinary creative collaborator with a distinguished career. She has contributed to major Australian landscape architecture and urban design projects, including the acclaimed Australian Garden (Stage 2) at the Royal Botan

ic Gardens Cranbourne (T.C.L). Natasha has also made significant contributions as a lecturer, teaching landscape architecture at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels at RMIT and Melbourne Universities, where she imparted her expertise and passion to students. In 2014, Natasha made a tree change with a purpose to Spargo Creek, near Daylesford in the Central Victorian Highlands. There, she designed and created Oak and Monkey Puzzle, an iconic property celebrated for its innovative garden design, workshops, and events. This renowned space became a vibrant hub for artisans, fostering creativity and collaboration while sparking dynamic conversations and nurturing a warm sense of community. Natasha's journey at Oak and Monkey Puzzle was a lesson in living well, grounded in the rhythms of country life, gardening, and sustainability. In 2022, after nearly a decade of country living, Natasha and her family moved on from Oak and Monkey Puzzle to a new adventure in Daylesford. At her new property, Little Cottage On A Hill, Natasha continues to explore sustainable and productive garden design on a smaller scale. This project embodies her experiences and lessons learned, aiming to inspire others to create beautiful and functional spaces with minimal resources. Natasha is also a sought-after speaker, workshop teacher, and creative collaborator, sharing her inspiring journey through various media. Her work has been featured in Australian Women's Weekly, Country Style magazine, Better Homes & Gardens, and The Block.

01/09/2026

The garden is beginning to move here in Daylesford, while on the other side of the world, autumn is settling in, the days are beginning to slow.

For the first time, my monthly garden tasks blog covers both hemispheres. What to plant, what to sow, and what to do this September for the five Australian climates as I always have, and now for the Northern Hemisphere too. Over the past few months, so many more of you have been joining me from the other side of the world, and it feels like time to make what I share here work for you as well as it does for the community here at home. So welcome! I am so glad you’re here.

Here in the Central Victorian Highlands, we are still finishing winter. What locally we call ‘sprinter’ lingers for another few weeks. The wattle has begun turning the roadsides gold. A frost or two is still to come. Everything is beginning to move at once, but very few things are quite ready to be planted out without protection just yet.

If you are in the Northern Hemisphere, September is when the set-up for next spring begins. Bulbs go in. Garlic goes in. Cuttings taken. Seed collected. It is one of the most useful months you have all year.

The full September blog is now live, with the sow, plant and task guide for every climate group. Read it here: https://www.natashamorgan.com.au/blog/september-garden-tasks

Or on Substack here: https://substack.com/

And if you think this might help someone else too, please share it with a gardening friend on your side of the world.

31/08/2026

I always say my year doesn't start in January. It starts when the sap rises. And right now, you can feel it beginning, see it happening.

The tête-à-têtes came up on the western verge in the last days of August, small, certain, absurdly yellow. The light lands deeper into the beds now and stays later. All winter I wrote about watching. Spring, I've come to think, is about feeling.

Though on this cool-climate hill it isn't truly spring yet. Frost keeps visiting until late October, maybe even later, so what comes first is the in-between I like to call 'sprinter'. We'll have two warm days that convince you is Spring is here, then a morning that bites. One step forward, two back.

I've written a reflection on this inbetween season on the blog. Where the word flora actually comes from, the roses on the fence that refused to sleep this winter, and the one thing the season is asking of me now: tending.

Fifteen days from today, The Productive Garden Companion, a book I've spent two years growing, goes out into the world. My own small becoming. Sap rising in another form.

Read the full piece on the blog: https://www.natashamorgan.com.au/blog/sap-rising-spring-daylesford-garden 🌿

###

25/08/2026

Winter is very nearly 'over'. I say that in inverted commas, because here we have an unofficial extra season, 'sprinter'. For a couple of months in the Central Highlands it teases you, making you think spring is on its way, then plunging you back into winter. It's a dance that can leave you exasperated. But you learn to live with it, and as a gardener, also to value it, because it gives you one last window of observation: a chance to read the garden before the flurry of green and colour of spring, summer and later autumn cloaks everything.

I never used to like winter. I used to dread it, in fact. Then I discovered it is the most powerful time in a garden, not because of what it produces but what it reveals. Winter reveals the bones of your garden: the structure, the positive and the negative space, the hollow, the form, the void. All the other seasons add another layer to it. If my garden in the depths of winter still feels like it has its place, then I know without a doubt that it will operate across every one of those seasons. If a garden works in winter, it's a garden that works.

So before the colour comes back, get out into your garden and see what winter is telling you. The full piece, What Winter Shows You, is on the blog (link below), and much of this thinking sits at the heart of my book, The Productive Garden Companion. Signed copies are available via https://www.natashamorgan.com.au/shop/the-productive-garden-companion

Find the blog here, https://www.natashamorgan.com.au/blog/whatwintershowsyou

23/08/2026

It never ceases to amaze me. A whole bunch of people turn up in a garden that has been shared so generously, and within minutes there is this instant sense of connection and community.

That was Phillip Island today. Our third Gardenstead Gathering, and this one hosted by our own members, Tiziana and Charles, who opened their garden to all of us.

The sun turned it on. It felt like spring here in Victoria, and the warmth came from the people as much as the sky. People gathering through a shared joy of gardens, some travelling a long way to be there.

This is what Gardenstead is all about. Real connection. Real community. Real people in real gardens. The generosity of people who open their gardens is the thing we want to see repeated over and over, everywhere across the world. Days like today feel like the perfect antidote to the hustle and disconnect in a world that often feels a little upside down. This is the good news story. And gosh it feels hopeful!

🌿

So if you have been thinking about gathering in a garden, wherever you are in the world, this is your moment. gardenstead Gatherings are for everybody across our community, and we are here to support you.

Tiziana and Charles, thank you for sharing your garden so openly. And to everyone who came, near and far, and filled the swap table once again to overflowing, thank you. There is nothing I love more than bringing people together in a garden.

Where would you love to gather? Let's make it happen and gather together!

20/08/2026

I hate asking for help.

Accepting it is even harder. Anyone who knows me will tell you that.

But here I am. Asking.

We are so nearly at 1000 pre-ordered copies of The Productive Garden Companion. It makes me emotional to even say that. 100s and 100s of you have bought a book you haven’t even seen. Trusting in something that doesn’t exist in your hands just yet.

That overwhelms me, in the best possible way.

This book has been two years of my life. Pretty much full time. An incredible leap of faith (Thank you Jane Willson for landing in my inbox that day).

And it’s a funny old world. A number like 1000 means something to publishers. But that’s not why I’m asking. I’m asking because of what it opens up. What it makes possible next.

So if you’ve been waiting to buy your copy at one of my events, this is me asking you to pre-order it now. From your local bookshop, or through the link in my bio. Then bring it along on the day. I will sign it, I will thank you in person, and I am working like crazy to make sure you do not go home without feeling you have really contributed to something special.

And if you pre-order before 8pm this Saturday 23 August (AEST) and send your proof of purchase to [email protected], you will go into the draw for a bespoke Daylesford and Trentham getaway courtesy of Acre of Roses - Trentham Accommodation , plus 2 workshop tickets and a syrup pack from me. $2,600 worth of thank you.

You know me. I set my ambitions high.

So can we do it? Can we get to 1000 together?

I am so grateful. So incredibly grateful.

Natasha xx

18/08/2026

There's a particular kind of nervous I felt the day my advance author copy of The Productive Garden Companion landed in a post bag on my doorstep - not writing-it nervous, letting-go-of-it nervous. Terrified in fact. So much so it took me nearly 36 hours to open it. (Who’s counting?!)

On Sunday 30th August I'm talking about exactly that, out loud, on a stage, into a microphone, a live podcast in fact, at the Daylesford Town Hall.

It's a live recording of Reskillience, the podcast hosted by Daylesford local Catie Payne - writer, goat wrangler and trained herbalist, who has a gift for asking the questions that matter. I'll be up there with friend Mara Ripani of Village Dreaming, whose Orto farm at Blampied and her book The Baker's Percentage carry the same kind of thread I'm chasing - what it takes to build something slowly, with your hands, and then hand it to other people to keep.

Three local women, two new books, one real conversation about the thrill of holding your book for the first time and the strange overwhelm of letting it go.

This event sits inside Daylesford Words in Winter, five days of talks, workshops and storytelling, running this year under the theme Curiouser and Curiouser. Here, winter here isn't something to get through before the good part starts. This is the good part. Bare branches, wood smoke, a full hall on a cold morning. Books, words, thoughts, conversation…

Sunday 30th August 2026, 10am-11am
Daylesford Town Hall, 76/78 Vincent St, Daylesford VIC
Tickets $18 full / $12 concession

Book your seat via the https://wordsinwinter.com festival website.

If you'd like to be first to know when the next stop on my book tour is announced, my newsletter is where I share it first, every time. Sign up via the link in bio. The announcement newsletter is about to go out, sharing for the very first time the jam-packed lineup of book launch events! Some of which are only open to newsletter subscribers as my heartfelt thank you for coming on this crazy journey that is ‘Natasha Morgan’ and standing beside me.

You have no idea what it means to me to have you here!

(Oh, and if you haven't yet entered the book giveaway, there’s a $2600 Daylesford getaway to win if you pre-order my book! Entries close Sunday 23 August at 8pm AEST)
All the giveaway details are via my website!)

xx

17/08/2026

The book is a month away. That’s exhilarating and terrifying all at once!

Instead of sending out the newsletter as I’d hoped I have spent the last day and a half in the potting shed. Dirt under my nails and etched into my skin to prove it. That is where I go when I need to come back to myself. To top up my well being tank when I feel like I’ve got nothing left.

And both things are true right now. I am so excited to be able to share the book with you. The support has blown me away. It has been the most heartwarming thing. I am also utterly spent. Nine months since I have had a day off, which is a bit embarrassing to say out loud, but there it is. I have wanted to bring this book into the world in the most generous way I can, and it has taken a lot!

So the garden brings me back to myself. It always has. My kids know that when I walk out into the garden, mum comes back inside a little bit more grounded, a little bit happier, a little bit more content.

Here is what I have been up to. Potting up seed I saved last year, Italian melons and tromboncino, that climbing Italian zucchini that looks wonderfully strange and whose tender leaves you can cook, which hardly anyone knows. Labelling paddle pop sticks for a mixed heirloom gourd I’m imagining running up over the arches. The chickens have started laying again and they are very pleased with themselves. They are beautiful potting shed company,

In a couple of weeks this whole garden gets cut back. Phlomis, Miscanthus, sedum seed heads, all of it bundled up into a botanical installation for my Daylesford book launch.

I wrote through the whole of last winter, so I feel like I missed a season of pottering, and pottering is my idea of heaven. There is still the website to finish. There are still all the resources in the book to land in the most beautiful way. But spring is on its way, and I’ve made myself a little promise to m get outside every day between now and then.

Come and have a wander with me.
(And yes I promise the newsletter with all the book launch events isn’t far away!)

09/08/2026

Am I mad? Probably. But trust me, there’s a method to my madness.

It is far too early to be starting tomatoes outdoors here in Daylesford. Far too early! But I’ve got a box of beautiful advanced seedlings, and on a rainy August afternoon I’ve decided to get them going anyway.

Here’s the method. Three varieties. Apollo, Cherry and Black Russian. I’ve stripped the lower leaves off each stem and I’m potting them on deep, right up to that top set of leaves.

Everywhere there’s a node buried down the stem, the plant will throw out new roots. More roots, more vigour. By the time they go in the ground in November (Melbourne Cup Day is my marker), once the frost has passed, they’ll be as established and as strong as I can possibly make them.

Now, do not try this at home unless you have somewhere warm and bright to raise them. I have my potting shed and a big heat mat to keep them warm. But, if you’ve got a warm spot, you might just have a chance of getting tomatoes before Christmas too.

Our cold temperate growing season here is short. This is how I stretch it.

Follow along and let’s see if it works 🤞

08/08/2026

My Japanese apricot is blossoming too early. Again. Filed in the body first, the diary second. The garden is speaking.

Sprinter, we call this false spring here in Daylesford, practically a season of its own. The pear tree flowering in autumn. The wattle firing weeks ahead of itself. Signals, all of them, if you've learned the language.

Later this month I'm bringing a lifetime of that listening to a stage in Trentham, for Words in Winter, to ask one question out loud: do plants speak?

I'm not a scientist. I'm a gardener of nearly fifty years who has spent that lifetime listening as if they might. And the science has become genuinely wild. Stressed tomato plants click at frequencies moths can hear. Trees trade carbon through fungal threads under our feet. Whether any of it counts as speaking depends on something no laboratory can measure: whether we've learned to listen.

I'll bring the golden light moments, the tree I loved and lost, a snake in a silent forest, the research rewriting what we thought we knew, and an invitation I hope you'll carry home to your own patch.

A silent conversation that sometimes speaks incredibly loudly. Come and be part of it.

Do plants speak? Let Nature Do the Talking
Trentham Words in Winter
The Mechanics, 66 High Street, Trentham
Saturday 22 August, 4pm to 6pm
Tickets are limited, and you can book here https://www.trybooking.com/events/landing/1603479.

If you can't make it to Trentham, or simply want to be the first to hear where my book conversion series goes next, my newsletter is where I'll announce every future date before anywhere else. Head to my website to sign up for the newsletter.

07/08/2026

For years, the word productive felt like a scoreboard. Sitting alongside words like ‘industrious’, ‘capable’, and dare I say it, ‘worthy.

Kilos counted. Beds measured. A pressure to prove the garden was earning its keep, and me along with it.

The garden I tend now works differently. Beauty and abundance live side by side in it. Flowers beside food, medicinals beside herbs, seed heads left standing through winter so the birds and insects have somewhere to be. Some of it grows out on the verge, where it feeds a street I never planned to feed.

A productive garden, for me, is one that gives more than it takes.
It’s taken me nearly an entire lifetime to be able to articulate it so clearly, to feel it, know it. Ten words. No more. A productive garden is one that gives more than it takes. It gives food, yes. It also gives shade, scent, habitat, a place to heal, a reason to step outside before the kettle boils. And it gives back to the people and living beings who live in and around it.

Fifty years is what it has taken me to be able to capture 10 simple words.

They are the foundation of a life that has grown up in gardens, and most of all in my own, through the practice and presence of tending them, and through the writing of this book. Even in the writing, my definition kept expanding, opened out by every contributor I spoke to. Extraordinary conversations that are woven right through the book by way of QR codes, so you can sit in them with me too.

That is what I am really handing you here. Not just my thoughts, but an offering, so that I can stand beside you wherever you are in your own garden, your own life. I can't wait to share it with you.
I've written more about this on the blog, and it sits at the heart of my book, The Productive Garden Companion. Read the blog here: https://www.natashamorgan.com.au/blog/2025/10/2/what-a-productive-garden-means-to-me

***The Productive Garden Companion giveaway, valued at $2,600, is open until 8:00pm Sunday 23rd August.
Pre-order the book and enter via https://www.natashamorgan.com.au

As always, thank you for being here.

xx

Address

Daylesford, VIC
3460

Telephone

+61403061974

Website

https://geni.us/productivegarden, https://www.natashamorgan.com.au/

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