What’s the strangest thing you’ve discovered in someone else’s garden?
I was digging and found a washing machine buried in the garden, and then when we pulled it out it was full of empty VB tins. I’m sure someone said, “Oh, come on, we’re not taking it to the tip. Let’s just bury it.” And they’re just doing it on a Saturday arvo and having a few beers, and then they’ve thrown all the beers into the washing machine. That was my forensic assessment.
When was the last time you didn’t have a beard?
November 1991. I was in Egypt and got a little bit of stomach unrest, and the last thing I wanted to do was shave. It was November and we were heading up into Europe, so it was cold. So I thought, “Oh, bugger it. I won’t shave.” People ask me, “How much to shave your beard? We’ve got a fundraiser – [can we offer] $500 to shave your beard?”
How much would it take to get you to shave it off?
I’ve got a price on it: $1m for every year that I’ve had it. I want some serious money to do some awesome things. With $34m, I can support some serious projects and do scholarships and invest the money to then run the profit back into these groups. That could be good fun.
What’s your favourite garden that people can visit?
I’ve just been there and I got my annual fix: Kings Park and Botanic Garden in Perth. The south-west of WA is a biodiversity hotspot, and the flowers and plant species that are part of that landscape have evolved on some of the most depleted soils on the planet, yet they provide a showcase of flowering beauty. Every time I go there, I just get blown away. And I need it – it’s like a horticultural drug. I gotta get my fix. Winter is when it’s going off, because those plants have developed an understanding of life that they don’t go and put out all this effort to make a flower in the middle of summer that’s going to get smashed by 35-degree heat, so they flower in autumn and winter and early spring. And some of the colours! The Lechenaultias have a blue like you don’t normally see in nature. I just walk around there in a daze. And the mechanisms that they’ve adapted – the eucalypts flower downwards; they sort of say “well, I’m not going to point my flowers up to the sun. The insects will find us.” And the insects have adapted. It’s little things like that. And the more I go there, the more I learn, and the more I learn, the more I realise I don’t know, so it just makes me hungrier for more.
What is the weirdest thing you have done for love?
I dragged someone along a train platform, because I was leaving Paris and we were having a final embrace, and I was so lost in that embrace that the train was moving. And when my friend started to pull away, I was like, “What’s wrong?” And she said, “Costa, the train is moving. Like, let go of me.”
What’s the most under-appreciated insect?
I’d say moths, because they live in the shadow of butterflies. But the only difference is that one’s of the night and one’s of the day. We don’t see moths as much so we don’t rate them – but if we got out there and saw their incredible patterns and their incredible engineering, they are as good as butterflies! But because we turn on lights and interfere with their natural world, and they bang on the glass, we go, “Oh, stop annoying us.” What if they could put a loudspeaker in our house and say: “Turn the lights off! Stop polluting my landscape.”
What’s the best piece of advice you have ever received?
My dad said to me, “If it’s worth doing, do it properly,” and I always remember that. If ever I go to cut a corner, he’s there on my shoulder going, “Excuse me!” It’s something that frustrated me if I was doing stuff with him – he’d be so insistent and so particular – but he’s made me the same. I get it, because when I see something that been done properly and it lasts, I go, “That’s what it’s about.” I see some poor quality work and that frustrates me.
What plant do you most relate to, and why?
The Sydney red gum because it reminds me of home, which is the Sydney sandstone. It lives on the ridges where it has a beautiful view, and then the breeze hits it, and it moves and bends, and it has all these contorted shapes, like a sort of Yogi. It hangs there with a kind of reverence. They’re trees that have patience. And they’re a home, because when the branches senesce – when they die – they create these amazing hollows and become a real community for birds and small marsupials. So I feel like that community side of me is in all the hollows.
What’s the oldest thing you own, and why do you still have it?
I’ve got a pair of secateurs that were my grandfather’s. Why do I still have it? Because that’s one of the most special things that I’ve got: an instrument that he held in his hand. Every time I hold it, I feel like he’s holding my hand. And they’re perfectly functional – I can put new blades on them. If you’re going to buy something, buy it properly. Pay four times as much for the best quality. These secateurs, he would have been using them in the 50s and 60s – so they’re around 70 years old and they’re still perfectly OK. We build stuff these days with an obsolescence, because there’s this stupid business model that you want repeat purchases. Things like these secateurs really mean something to me, so if I give a gift, I want to give a good gift – or no gift at all.
Do you have a nemesis?
Well, I know that [ABC’s Hard Quiz host] Tom Gleeson has me as his nemesis, he’s always having a crack at me. I kind of love that – I don’t mind it at all, it’s just fun. But yeah, I could say that I’m his nemesis.
Do you have a favourite bird?
I’ll go the eagle, because they’re so majestic and there’s incredible engineering in them. Just to watch them glide, I go into a trance. They’re so precious because there’s so few of them – their habitat is under threat. When I do see one, while I’m driving or walking, I’ll just be totally focused on it. I love that birds are something that we can’t keep. We’ve just gotta invest time and understanding into [finding out] where they could be and then go there and have time and patience and just allow the ducks to line up, so to speak. Birdwatching is something that I’ve gotten more and more into. The more you do it, the more you realise that it’s not just about looking, it’s about listening. You’ve got to learn the sounds and the songs, and then learn the plants and the lay of the land. And then you start to understand the geology. So then geology is cool! It’s not just for nerds.
Gardening Australia Junior season 2 starts 1 January on ABC iview and 3 January on ABC Kids. Costa’s Garden by Costa Georgiadis, illustrated by Brenna Quinlan, is published by HarperCollins, $24.99
