Stephanie Mason has turned a hobby into a lifestyle business and there’s nothing going to stop her from enjoying it.
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Although past the official retirement age, Stephanie still looks forward to ‘work’ every day at Mason’s Fuchsia Fantasy at Lillico in north-west Tasmania, but when work is your hobby, it isn’t really work.
“People say to me, isn’t it time you sold up, and I say no it’s not,” she said.
“If you get up in the morning and you don’t want to go to work, it’s time to stop. That’s not me.
“I still get up and think what am I going to do today, what do I need to do today.
“I spend six out of seven days out there weeding, potting, doing whatever is needed.
“We all need stuff to do and I just love the fuchsias.”
Although it only covers two hectares, Mason’s Fuchsia Fantasy, run by Stephanie and her husband Ken, is the biggest fuchsia farm in the southern hemisphere.
“We were on a potato and cattle farm and the fuchsias were my hobby,” Stephanie said.
“My sister moved onto a farm near us and she asked if I wanted some cuttings. I liked them and they grew easily and it went from there.”
Stephanie has always loved being outside, and even as she was raising her children and several foster children, she encouraged them to join her in the great outdoors.
“My house work would finish at 9.30am and after that I’d be outside until the kids came home from school.”
When the cattle and potato farm was becoming difficult to manage, Stephanie and Ken started looking for a small parcel of land to house a coffee shop and a fuchsia business and found a beautiful spot overlooking Bass Strait.
They renovated the old house, filled the tunnels to suit the fuchsias and then built an 80-seat tearoom.
They actually started selling when they were on the farm.
“We were dealing with a farm company and they used to come out to sell our cattle,” Stepahine said.
“One day, one of them said, you ought to put some of them in the shop.
“We took a dozen in and the next day they rang and asked for more.”
They have been on the Lillico site for 26 years and Stephanie has been growing fuchsias for 50 years.
About 1800 square metres of the land is dedicated to the fuchsias.
“It’s a big area, and we have the largest collection of fuchsias in the southern hemisphere,” Stephanie said with great pride.
There are more than 100 different species, often in shades of pink, purple and red, including Triphylla — a long tubular variety sometimes referred to as cigarette or honeysuckle fuchsia — and a small variety Encliandra.
In 1997, Stephanie went to a conference in England and Europe and started importing different varieties.
“We bought some back in from England four or five times, but it was very difficult, because of what they had to be sprayed with here.
It gives them rot, and it was expensive, so we stopped doing that.”
Fuchsias are native to South America and were named by a botanist after a doctor whose surname was Fuchs.
In Europe, they are pronounced differently, emphasising the Fuchs.
While Stephanie admits fuchsia is a hard word to spell, she said they were very easy to grow.
“The north-west coast of Tasmania with its moderate temperatures is the best growing place in Australia for fuchsias,” she said.
Stephanie doesn’t turn flower growing into a grind.
“I tell people that gardening is all about enjoying yourself and having fun,” she said.
“Once you start worrying too much about whether something will grow, that’s when it gets too hard. You should enjoy your gardening, don’t be worried about it.
“I saw what they do in winter in Europe when they wrap them up and put them in attics and all kinds of things, but I couldn’t do that – it would be too hard.”
The flowering season is different in cooler Tasmania compared to the mainland.
“They flower more in spring in Sydney, and then it’s too hot in summer, but they’re more a summer time flower for us, though they do grow all through winter, except if there’s a heavy frost” she said.
“Their roots will still be growing underground in winter – they just need a rest like we all do – and they come back in the spring.
“I tell people to not take them out of the ground – just leave them and they’ll come back.
Stephanie doesn’t fertilise her garden.
“If they’re in pots it’s different, because they need fertiliser and regular watering, but once established in the garden, they’re pretty strong plants.
“Most plants can go out and find the goodness they want. I just put them in the ground and they grow.”
A lot of information about fuchsias says they need to be grown in the shade or be covered, but Stephanie said that’s a misnomer in Australia and she grows them under the sun.
One tip is to prune them right back to just above the ground, and in springtime, they’ll be covered in flowers.
Stephanie and Ken’s love of the flowers led to release a book last year, Fuchsia Fantasy, complete with 494 photos.
“Our plan was to do a book with photos,” she said.
“All the other books have so much information and hardly any photos, but everyone wants to see photos.”
However, information is important, and Stephanie is a stickler for using the correct names of varieties adopted by the hybridisers to maintain a correct history of fuchsias in Australia.
Most are registered with the American Fuchsia Society.
There used to be fuchsia societies and many nurseries in Australia, but Stephanie has seen interest wane.
“There’s certainly not the interest in young people as there used to be. It’s not the thing to be outside doing things.”
The café closed about three years ago and they no longer do mail order, but Stephanie and Ken have no plans to close the fuchsia nursery.
“We don’t have a big market apart from people coming in, but it means it’s a bit more relaxing now, and we have more time for family” she said.
“But we love it here and it makes the work all worth it when someone comes in and says they’re beautiful.”