Filled with love

Moree’s latest wedding venue has sprung from a swamp, a whim and a love of Granny’s garden.

Story + Photos Mandy McKeesick

Unseasonal winter rain has fallen overnight in Moree, northern NSW, and the sun struggles to penetrate a heavy morning fog. An ethereal mist falls on a fountain-showered pond, raindrops hang delicately from white rose petals and manicured green lawns squelch underfoot. Undeterred by the weather, Casey Budd is gardening. Her daughter Claudia, 3, scampers through an auburn carpet of leaves beneath an arching plane tree, while one-year-old Annabelle supervises proceedings from a pram.

Casey, an agronomist, plants white snapdragons and silver-foliaged westringia in a dark soil wriggling with worms. The westringia, in particular, is supposed to be drought- and frost-tolerant and not mind getting its feet wet. For here, on the north-western plains of NSW, heat, cold and flood will challenge any gardener.

Casey’s green thumb developed at her grandparents’ property near Gurley, south of Moree, where she would spend hours in the garden with her grandmother until “Granny got older and would sit in a swing with her dog, Fifi, and watch me do all the work”.

In 2022, Casey and her builder husband Jacob heard about this 18ha property for sale 10 minutes west of Moree on the Mehi River, with a shed home and a 2.5ha established garden. “This was Disneyland – a garden beyond my wildest dreams,” Casey says of the park-like grounds with towering trees, secreted nooks and crannies, and a centrepiece pond and fountain. “When I first laid eyes on it, I couldn’t unsee it, I couldn’t not buy it.”