It’s the handy work of Charlie Asquith who sunk roots in Nelson Bay in 1949 with his wife Janet - who died four months ago at 89.

A retired fisherman but always a romantic, he’s since dedicated the garden to her, with a sign on the porch balustrade, ‘Janet’s Garden’. 

“We’ve always had a garden,” he said.

“I’m no green thumb but I like this sort of caper and I’ll keep pottering around.

“You’ve got to keep the ornaments clean.”

The garden has long held a certain attraction to neighbours in the know, with its curious collections kept neatly between pathways of synthetic grass.

Among the garden gnomes and festively decorated tree stumps sits a love seat, beneath a frangapani.

Together they would sit there in the shade and avail themselves of a cool nor-easterly breeze, on a hot day.

“The neighbours love it. One of them painted the [fountain] girl for me,” he said.

“They’re always asking me what sort of trees they are but I’m no gardener –  I don’t know trees – and my memory is going.

“If they want to know I tell them this one might be from Japan, by the flowers on them, I think some of them believe me.”

He admits he is prone to sitting back and thinking about their marriage of 71 years and three months.

“We used to sit out here 50 years ago,” he said.

“We were married for 71 years and three months, it’s a long time,” he said.

“She had been sick for nearly a year in and out of hospital including seven months at Harbourside Village.”

“She was 89 when she died.”