My top 5 plants from Oak & Monkey Puzzle

Some plants stay with you.

Not just because they performed well, although these ones certainly did, but because they came to represent something much bigger. A season. A milestone. A long held dream finally made real.

Oak & Monkey Puzzle was where so many of my plant dreams came true. It was the first place I could truly grow the things I had longed for. The plants I wanted to cut in armfuls. The plants that marked the seasons so clearly. The ones that offered beauty, fragrance, structure, and that particular kind of generosity that makes a garden feel deeply lived in.

For nine years on five acres in Spargo Creek, I built that garden slowly, season by season, precinct by precinct. It held me through some of the hardest years of my life, but it also gave me so much. It gave me a place to test my ideas. It gave me proof that beauty and productivity can sit side by side. It gave me a garden full of plants that worked hard, and a few that were simply too magnificent not to grow.

This month, as part of my April month of milestones, I’ve created a free eBook for newsletter subscribers featuring the full Oak & Monkey Puzzle plant list, organised garden by garden across the property. It is a list built over nearly a decade of living, growing, observing, and refining on five acres.

In this article, I begin with my top five plants I return to again and again when I think about Oak & Monkey Puzzle.

They are not the only plants I loved there, not by a long shot, but they are five that hold something of the spirit of that garden for me.

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Hydrangea paniculata

If there is one plant I have become known for, it is probably this one.

The Hydrangea paniculata I grew at Oak & Monkey Puzzle never came with a cultivar name. It was simply sold to me as Hydrangea paniculata, and over time it became one of the plants I most relied upon. Hardy, generous, and deeply beautiful across an extraordinarily long season, it carried the kind of quiet strength I value so much in a garden.

In spring and summer, it was all freshness and lift. Then came that beautiful soft shift into blush tones, before the flowers deepened into the rusted, parchment like autumn phase I love so much. Even after that, the spent flower heads held beautifully through winter, catching frost and low light in a way that made them feel just as valuable as when they were in full bloom.

That is what I mean when I talk about high performance plants. They do not only offer one fleeting moment. They hold their place and give back over time. This is something I talk about in my upcoming book - stay tuned for a huge announcement!

This plant mattered enough to me that when I left Oak & Monkey Puzzle, I took cuttings from it and planted them again at Little Cottage on a Hill. To me, that says everything. It’s a plant I would happily propagate from one property to another. I will never let it go!

Fragrant repeat flowering roses

For me, a rose must earn its place through fragrance as well as beauty.

At Oak & Monkey Puzzle, one of the great joys was finally being able to grow armfuls of roses that were not only beautiful, but richly scented and generous across the season. I did not want roses that gave one quick flush and disappeared. I wanted repeat flowering roses that I could keep cutting, keep bringing inside, and keep living with.

Three of my great loves were ‘Jude the Obscure’, ‘Golden Celebration’ and ‘Just Joey’. They had the softness, fragrance and fullness I longed for, and they brought that old world sense of abundance that is almost impossible to replicate with florist flowers. To cut them fresh from the garden and bring them indoors was one of those bucket list moments that felt every bit as magical as I had imagined.

They were not just ornamental plants. They shaped the atmosphere of the picking garden. They offered fragrance, seasonal continuity, beauty in the vase, and the kind of richness that makes you want to stop whatever you are doing and take notice.

If I am making room for a rose, it must be doing all of that.

Hellebores

Hellebores are among the plants I rely on most for that crucial turning point in the year when winter begins to loosen its grip.

At Oak & Monkey Puzzle, they brought beauty at exactly the moment it was most needed. When so much else was still resting, hellebores were already there, quietly holding the garden and offering the first sense that the season was beginning to shift.

I grew all sorts, from single black to double black, single whites and many shades in between. What I love most about them is their restraint. They are not loud plants, but they are deeply moving in their timing and presence. They flower when the garden still feels sparse. They ask you to come closer. They reward attention.

They are also wonderfully suited to cool climate gardens, particularly where there is filtered light and a certain softness of setting. At Oak & Monkey Puzzle, they sat beautifully within the more layered and intimate planting combinations, offering that low, luminous kind of beauty that can anchor a whole moment in the garden.

They are, without question, one of the plants I would never want to garden without. Post Office Farm Nursery are your hellebore specialist growers.

Peonies

Peonies are the exception in this list.

When I talk about plants that work hard or offer more than one thing back, peonies are not necessarily the first to come to mind. They are not long flowering. They are not especially structural for most of the year. And yet, when you can grow them well, you do.

Because they are magnificent.

At Oak & Monkey Puzzle, I discovered just how well peonies respond to a cool climate with real winter chill and frost. The corals, especially ‘Coral Charm’ and ‘Coral Supreme’, became particular herbaceous peony favourites. Their colour is not static. It shifts and softens as the blooms age, moving through tones that feel almost impossible to describe properly unless you have lived with them day by day.

I also loved the contrast between herbaceous peonies and tree peonies. Herbaceous peonies disappear completely and return with fresh energy each year. Tree peonies hold more of a woody presence and bring a different kind of structure. Both are worth growing.

Peonies ask for patience. They are not instant plants. But that is part of their beauty too. They remind us that some things in a garden are worth waiting for.

Sweet peas

Sweet peas are pure joy.

There is really no other way to say it.

They are one of the plants I most strongly associate with the kind of abundance I wanted to experience at Oak & Monkey Puzzle. Not abundance in the sense of excess, but in the sense of being able to cut huge fragrant bunches, carry them inside, press them into someone’s arms, and fill a room with their scent.

Once you have grown and picked sweet peas yourself, it is very hard to feel the same way about buying them.

Their flowers are delicate, but their generosity is immense. They climb, they flower, they perfume the air, and they give that unmistakable feeling of the season being fully alive. They are one of those plants that engage memory so quickly. A smell, a bunch in a child’s hands, a vase on the table, and the whole time of year comes flooding back.

If you are thinking about sweet peas now, this is the time to plant seed. And if you have never grown them before, I would encourage you to begin. They ask for a little care, but they return it in spades.

Why these five?

All five of these plants hold something different for me, but they are united by one thing. They helped make Oak & Monkey Puzzle feel like the garden I had always dreamed of.

Hydrangea paniculata gave me longevity and seasonal depth.

The roses gave me fragrance and armfuls.

Hellebores gave me late winter lift.

Peonies gave me beauty for beauty’s sake.

Sweet peas gave me scent, abundance and sheer delight.

Together, they tell a story about the kind of garden I was creating there. A garden where plants were chosen not only because they looked good in one moment, but because they contributed to the life of the place. Because they carried the season. Because they gave me something to cut, notice, remember, or revere.

And because, in one way or another, they helped shape the experience of living there.

Subscribe to the newsletter and download the full Oak & Monkey Puzzle plant list

As part of my April month of milestones, I’ve created a beautiful free eBook for newsletter subscribers featuring the full Oak & Monkey Puzzle plant list, organised garden precinct by garden precinct.

It is a detailed record of the planting across the property, built over nine years of living and gardening on five acres, and I hope it offers both inspiration and practical ideas for your own garden, whatever scale you’re working at.

You can subscribe to the newsletter here.

Join a workshop

If you love plants that work hard and give more than one thing back, my Medicinal Garden workshop is a natural next step. We’ll explore some of the most useful and beautiful plants to grow, and how they can enrich both your garden and your daily life.

Explore current workshops in the shop.

If you are building your garden from home right now, my e books on Wicking Bed Gardens and Introduction to Backyard Chicken Keeping offer practical step by step guidance that pairs well with the workshops.

Stay connected

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And stay tuned. There is a major announcement coming very soon, and I cannot wait to share it with you.

Thanks so much for following along.

Natasha xx

You may want to check out my related content below:
Hydrangea Paniculata: A Year-Round Beauty in the Garden – this is a plant that never fails to bring joy

April garden tasks for Australian climates & adding interest for winter – The first week of the month of milestones.

Autumn Gardening Jobs - A Gentle Approach for a Bountiful Season

The Medicinal Garden Workshop with Caroline Parker & Natasha Morgan — Step into the magic of nature