Spring rain

After drought and fire and heartache, Mandy Reid’s life, like her garden, is beginning to bloom again. Samantha Trenoweth meets Tenterfield’s favourite flower farmer.

- Samantha Trenoweth

The sight of Mandy Reid out in her garden with secateurs, picking roses for a fresh Christmas wreath, is glorious. The smile on her face is pure sunshine and such a contrast to the tears in her eyes when last we spoke. The last time The Weekly caught up with her, Mandy was midway through 2019 on the tail-end of a devastating drought, and her garden was dying.

“It’s been tough,” she told us. “Spring and summer were absolutely dry. Storms are so erratic these days. You can see them and you want to go out and touch them and drag them over but they just won’t come. I can’t tell you how sad I am about the garden.”

Mandy turned 60 this year. She’s weathered drought and nearby fires, the contamination of the town water supply in the deluge that followed and the death of both her parents since last we met. Yet she remains a dynamo. From just an acre of land in the town of Tenterfield, NSW, she operates the White Cottage Flower Farm with associated classes in floristry, photography and art, and a thriving business in antiques and old wares. She’s also a bit of an Instagram influencer, with 20,000 devoted followers.

When Mandy and her husband, Hamish, moved to Tenterfield 25 years ago, they fell in love with the town’s trees, and they bought a beautiful old cottage with enough land to grow trees and shrubs and cut flowers.

Watching it all die was heartbreaking.