Deborah Mullins prepares her Hesket garden for Open Studios Daylesford Macedon Ranges Silver birches thrive at Deborah Mullins' studio and garden, at her 16-hectare Hesket property. If you were to divide gardeners into either collectors or artists, Deborah Mullins would be in the second camp with a bit of the first thrown in. Since moving from a regular residential block in Balwyn to 16 hectares in Hesket, she has devoted much of her time to cultivating a garden with whatever plants catch her eye. It's a self-seeding, free-flowing affair, filled with all the exotic, native and productive plants Mullins never had room for in the city. It's also got room for a photographic studio where, by contrast, Mullins produces work that leaves nothing to chance. The garden has become her way of "coming to terms with the fact I can't control everything." Rhododendrons thrive at Deborah Mullins' studio and garden, at her 16-hectare Hesket property. Being beside paddocks, there are endless weedy grasses coming in and - as opposed to a spot on a photograph - I will often walk past them. If I let every weed bother me it would drive me to distraction. Mullins is one of 30 artists in the Daylesford Macedon Ranges whose studios - and by extension gardens, even if that just means the plantings around their workspace - are open this month. Mullins, whose garden was on display through Open Gardens Australia only a few weeks ago, says gardening in Hesket has been a lesson in understanding the power of the weather. At an elevation of 800 metres, her property is exposed to low temperatures and high winds. Plants that do well in nearby but crucially downhill gardens can struggle here. A feature of Hesket farm is the drystone walls which offer protection for country-cottage flowerbeds. Most summers her five edible chestnut trees - always regarded as a cold climate plant - fail to yield sweet fruits within the nut and prickly husks. Mullins suspects it is because the trees (which require cross-pollination and do best with two different cultivars in close proximity) don't receive enough sun. Meanwhile her apple trees drop their still immature fruit in the wind. Similarly, her tomatoes remain steadfastly green because of the lack of warmth. She hopes the tomato issue is resolved for this summer, largely thanks to husband Tom erecting a greenhouse. She has also decided to concentrate on short-season cherry tomatoes given the big, beefy varieties' refusal to ripen in the brief interval between the onset of warm temperatures and the return of cool ones. The new seedlings are taking off in her new greenhouse now. The wind problem is trickier to fix. With the property on the north face of Mount Macedon boasting views across the valley to the Cobaw Range, Mullins is reluctant to plant trees as windbreaks because they would visually hem her in. She is all for establishing low-lying windbreaks though. The terraces to the front of the house already have them in the form of snaking expanses of drystone wall, assembled from stone collected from surrounding paddocks. The walls protect beds brimming with typical country-cottage fare (cosmos, aquilegia, poppies, irises, nigella, rugosa roses). However, these walls do not extend to the side of the house, where Mullins has planted a large circular vegetable garden on land the previous owners had set aside for a tennis court. She is cocooning this bed with a perimeter border of tough, insect-attracting (she has pollination in mind) shrubs, including Philotheca 'Bournda Beauty', Callistemon citrinus 'White Anzac' and an assortment of grevilleas. More Australian plants (Eremophila, Chrysocephalum, Scaevola) are growing over the mound covering the fireproof bunker the Mullins built. What is on Mullins' side is the soil: a deep, rich loam that she feeds with her own aged mix of shredded manna gum bark (lots of mature trees tower over the garden), manure (cows, horses and alpacas roam the surrounding paddocks), autumn leaves and household scraps. Rhododendrons and silver birches are thriving. And while Mullins is about to give up on her warm-loving kaffir lime and tangelo, which won't comply with the Hesket climate, the maples are multiplying. Being something of a collector, Mullins has been seeking out cultivars to go with the assortment already there. Mullins' studio and garden, 162 Hesket Boundary Road, Hesket, is open this weekend and next as part of Open Studios Daylesford Macedon Ranges. Go to dmropenstudios.com.au for more information.