A Field Series

My new column for BILLY Magazine

Across the road from my Daylesford verge garden, the wintersweet (Chimonanthus praecox) is just beginning at Wombat Hill Botanic Gardens. My daughter and I walked up there last week to look for it. You smell it before you see it — the flowers almost nothing, waxy and translucent against the bare branches, but the scent stops you mid-step. And then you stand there a while.

I walked back to our little cottage, knowing this was the week to share the news.

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A Field Series — my new column for BILLY Magazine

A Field Series by Natasha Morgan is my new quarterly column for BILLY Magazine. The first piece, The Wintering, lands in BILLY Issue 03 — Air — this winter, right now in fact. I am BILLY's first columnist, and I could not be more delighted.

The masthead is locked. The format is locked. Four issues a year — one for each season — and each piece runs to that season's BILLY theme. The Wintering sits inside Issue 03's Air. The Quickening follows in Issue 04, Flora — spring. A returning artefact, rendered four times a year, in print and in voice.

How this came about

I came to BILLY the way many of you will — as a reader. I picked up Issue 01 in a café and brought it home, the way you bring home a thing you don't want to throw away. It does what good print should do. It stays.

So I wrote to Phoebe Hartley, BILLY's editor, to tell her I loved what she was making.

What followed was generous. Phoebe came to Little Cottage on a Hill and spent a couple of hours with me — and from that visit she wrote Grow One Thing, the BILLY story about the work I'm doing here. (Some of you have already read it.) Earlier this year I was invited to join the Issue 02 Earth launch panel at the Victoria Hotel in Woodend. BILLY is more than a magazine; it is a series of activations and gatherings, and that night was one of them. Vibrant, engaging and utterly cup-filling.

I had been thinking about a column-as-series for a while. But we definitely landed on this beautiful collaborative and value-sharing opportunity together. Alongside her warmth and generosity, Phoebe has given me extraordinary freedom to shape the column — the kind of freedom an editor can only offer when her own vision for the magazine is solid enough to hold the work. Phoebe's is.

What I want this column to be

An anchor. A returning piece of writing that is deeply of this region — rooted in the terroir of a cool temperate climate, Daylesford, the Macedon Ranges and beyond — and that takes readers back to their environment, to observation, to curiosity, to small and doable practices for the season. A column that earns its place on a BILLY reader's coffee table for the same reason BILLY does. Because it stays.

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The Wintering — BILLY Issue 03

The inaugural piece sits in BILLY Issue 03, AIR, out now. It opens with the seed heads bejewelled at first light on the verge here at Little Cottage on a Hill. It turns on a year that begins with sap, not January, and on observation as the gardener's greatest teacher. The sidebar carries a handful of things to do now in a cool-climate winter garden — what to prune, what to plant bare-root, what frost is for.

You'll find BILLY at any of the seventy-plus stockists Phoebe has across the region — from Sunbury to Castlemaine. The full list is at billypress.com/stockists.

A note on BILLY

If you have a business in this region and you're looking for a values-led print publication to support through advertising, BILLY is one I'd highly recommend. I have no vested interest in saying this beyond a wish to see independent regional media in our community thrive. Phoebe is building something for the long arc. Backing BILLY is backing the storytelling of this place.

Then The Quickening

After The Wintering comes The Quickening — my piece for BILLY Issue 04, Flora. Spring. Sap rising. More on that when we get there.

For now: walk up the road to your nearest stockist. Take BILLY home. Read.

The wintersweet is doing its work whether we notice it or not. But noticing is the practice. Also the joy.

Continue your gardening journey with me

If you enjoy this kind of content, my workshops offer more detail and guidance on design, productivity and seasonal care.

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

I share seasonal tips, behind the scenes at Little Cottage on a Hill, and new resources through my newsletter. Subscribe to receive my entire plant list from the garden as a personal thank you.

You can also pre-order my book The Productive Garden Companion, the book I have wanted to find my entire life. A complete guide to growing for abundance and beauty in any space. The Productive Garden Companion is a practical, reassuring and visually rich modern gardening book that meets gardeners wherever they are, from windowsill pots to generous acreage.

You may want to check out my related content below:

June Garden Tasks - For Australian Climates

Growing Soil: Growing Soil: The Foundation to Vibrant Gardens and Nutrient-Dense Plants

Growing Philosophies: Permaculture for Beginners