Susan's nurturing nature reaps rewards
3 May 2002
Susan Meli.
After 20 years as a nurse, Gisborne resident Susan Meli decided she would like to swap caring for patients for nurturing beautiful gardens.
She enrolled to study in Kangan Batman TAFE's Certificate IV in Horticulture - Landscape Design on a part-time basis at the Broadmeadows campus, and four years later that decision has proven extremely rewarding. Susan has been named Kangan Batman TAFE's Student of the Year, and has won a prestigious garden design competition.
While she still works two days-a-week as an operating theatre nurse, Susan now spends the rest of her week working for clients of her own garden design business.
"I really love nursing, and it would be very hard for me to leave it, but I always thought that after 20 years IÂ'd try something different,” she explains.
Aside from having worked in a nursery, Susan says she chose to study horticulture because she had always enjoyed working in her own garden. She had also coordinated working bees to revamp the gardens at her daughter's primary school.
“I could've read up on various things myself, but I think it was better to do formal study as I gained a broader knowledge than I would have by learning alone. I found the design and plant propagation subjects really interesting, but the course also pushed me into areas I may otherwise have avoided, such as the 'blokey' subjects like turf management and irrigation."
Susan ability and enthusiasm for garden design inspired her to enter the Melbourne International Flower and Garden Show's Don Fleming Student Ideas and Design Competition. The competition required entrants from Australian and NZ to design a garden based on the theme of 'A Living Masterpiece'. Susan was one of four students whose designs were selected to be constructed at the show.
Susan chose a literary masterpiece - A Midsummer Night's Dream - as the theme of her garden, to highlight the "power of gardens to touch human emotions across all generations, as do timeless masterpieces like the works of Shakespeare."
Based on the play's final scene which deals with themes such as magic versus reality, Susan's garden design aims to create a surreal dreamlike feeling. It includes features such as a one metre high statue of Puck, a river of mirrors, lighting that recreates moonlight, and a mist machine.
As winner of the competition, Susan will receive the Don Fleming Student Award, provided by Fleming's Nurseries. Her prize, valued at around $9,000, is a trip for two to England to attend the Chelsea Flower Show.
When she returns, Susan will continue to build her garden design business. She also plans to complete the Diploma of Garden Design.
"When I first qualified in perioperative nursing, I swore I'd had enough of study, but then years later here I am, studying something new and loving it," she says.
"I hate hearing other people my age saying 'I wish I'd studied such and such when I was young'. I tell them to just go and do it, because life's too short to have regrets."
Kangan Batman TAFE has 24,000 students across its six campuses in Broadmeadows, Moreland, Richmond, Coburg, Avondale Heights and Essendon.
Each year in May, Kangan Batman TAFE conducts two graduation ceremonies at the Moonee Valley Racecourse to accommodate all of its graduates and award-winning students.
The first ceremony, at which Susan received her awards, was held on Friday 3 May. The Hume City Council was major sponsor of the ceremony, while Broadmeadows Town Centre was supporting sponsor.
Susan won the following awards:
- Victorian Learning & Employment Skills Commission Student of the Year Award
- Gold Medallion Award for Best Student in the Industrial Technologies Group
- Silver Medallion Award for Best Horticulture Student
- Outstanding Achievement - Certificate IV in Horticulture
To contact Susan Meli and her business, Fundamental Garden Designs, email sjmeli@bigpond.net.au
