Kingsley Dixon and Lionel Johnston’s Cypress Farm garden rises from the ashes after destructive bushfire

Two years ago this 7ha sanctuary was a graveyard of ash. Today, for renowned botanist Kingsley Dixon and his husband Lionel Johnston, it is a testament to the fact that while fire can take a garden, it cannot touch the soul of the people who planted it. The tragedy of March 23 was no ordinary fire — a blaze that stole a decade of devotion. Two years after flames tore through Professor Dixon and Mr Johnston’s beloved Cyprus Farm in Waroona, the couple have restored the land to its former glory. For nearly a decade, the pair poured themselves into the property, transforming a forgotten block into a botanical sanctuary that drew admirers from across the nation. It was famous for its rare micro-climates, mangoes, avocados, Japanese maples and “healing waters”. Roughly 18 months before the blaze, Professor Dixon had been diagnosed with terminal liver cancer. Yet, as he spent his days among the leaves, he felt a restorative power that he said no medicine could replicate. He described the atmosphere as “magical” and he attributed part of his survival to the garden’s healing energy. “We had been living in a dream and it was wonderful,” Professor Dixon said. The dream was reaching its crescendo in late 2023 when the property was featured in that December’s issue of popular magazine Gardening Australia. “Everyone in Australia wanted to come. Everybody wanted to go to the tea house. Everybody wanted to see and we were a victim of our own success,” Professor Dixon said. The couple’s garden had landed on the radar of the country’s greatest designers and landscapers — people who Professor Dixon and Mr Johnston now call “long-time associates and friends”. “We realised, well, we really have achieved something. It was very uplifting,” Mr Johnston said. And then, in a heartbeat, it was gone. Professor Dixon and Mr Johnston were not unprepared — they had installed 25-outlet sprinkler systems across the property, a precaution that cost more than $40,000. But when the powerful inferno arrived, the garden didn’t stand a chance. The day before the fire remains etched in their minds as a bittersweet memory. “We had some of our best friends stay the night before and we had a wonderful evening meal,” Professor Dixon said. “We now refer to it affectionately as the Last Supper.” When the evacuation order came, they were forced to flee, leaving behind nine years of “working their fingers to the bone”. They could only watch from a distance as their home turned into a terrifying wall of light. “When we came back to the property later that night there was this enormous glow. We just couldn’t get in,” Professor Dixon said. The lush, layered landscape they had nurtured was replaced by a blackened, flattened expanse. “We lost all of the native garden, lots of our Japanese native collection went. We lost probably hundreds of our beautiful tree ferns, we lost the enclosure with fruit. We lost three small houses, the tea house, and then the two-story barn,” Professor Dixon said. The loss of the tea house was particularly brutal. “Those losses were a little bit hard for us, particularly with the tea house. We had only finished it eight months prior,” he said. While some plants staged a miraculous recovery, sprouting from the scorched earth in the months after the fire, not all have thrived. “There have been some really hard parts for us,” Professor Dixon said. “We had a number of our really big maples, some of our grandest specimens, sprouted the year after the fire. “But now this year, a number of the really big ones have died. They were just too traumatised. “That’s been a bit hard watching.” In a small mercy that the couple still treasures, their cottage-style timber home was spared. Yet, even as the smoke still hung in the air, Professor Dixon and Mr Johnston refused to let the fire have the final word. Instead of looking at the ruins, they began to compile a list of “silver linings”. “The silver linings are we decluttered, we were able to re-imagine the design of the garden,” Professor Dixon said. “And I think one of the extraordinary silver linings is the extraordinary generosity of Australians. Everybody pitched in and we just felt this wonderful positive energy by everybody.” The pair made a promise to themselves that they would never look back with longing. “We never reflect on what was, we just talk about the now and the future,” Professor Dixon said. Today, 4500 new plants, a new tea house and a re-imagined native garden are breathing life back into the property. Mr Johnston estimates they are about six months away from reaching the property’s “full potential” with the barn still under construction and the guest houses yet to be rebuilt. But in the meantime, the pair are enjoying spending time in their “beautiful” garden once again. “I just think it’s serenely beautiful,” Professor Dixon said. “You sit here and you detox emotionally and physically. Wherever you look, you just hear nature doing what nature does so well.”