My Garden Path: Michael McCoy

For a keen gardener, Michael McCoy is living the dream – spending his time with plants as a garden designer, author, blogger and host of ABC’s Dream Gardens.

He lives with his family in Victoria’s Macedon Ranges, where their garden includes an 100-year-old oak tree. Part of his job is visiting display gardens but his home garden isn’t about display, it’s about experimenting and doing the stuff he loves the most.

Michael had no plans to work in gardening as a teenager but the sudden death of his father in the summer after Michael finished school changed his outlook on life. As he was driving his mother to visit his father in hospital every day, the simple experience of watching roots grow on a cutting his mother had stuck in a glass of water led him unexpectantly to choose botany and science at university, followed by hands-on experience as an apprentice at Rippon Lea Estate in Melbourne.

Early disillusionment in his career choice was swept aside by a book lent by a friend – The Adventurous Gardener by English garden guru Christopher Lloyd – and, after meeting the author at a conference, he was invited to visit. Eventually he was invited not only to work at Christopher Lloyd’s famous garden Great Dixter for a year, but also to stay there.

“It’s like a musician living with Mozart or a painter living with Picasso,” he says of the experience.

But he counts his most important role as becoming the primary carer for his children while his wife followed her teaching career. “That has been a real privilege for me over the last 14 years.”
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