She bore the desertion with philosophical indifference.

Three chairs of the steamer type, all maimed, comprised the furniture of this roof-garden, with (by way of local colour) on one of the copings a row of four red clay flower-pots filled with sun-baked dust from which gnarled and rusty stalks thrust themselves up like withered elfin limbs.

Driving back to the city, through the assaultively scenic and demographically uniform little towns, they were silent.

Innovative New York City floral artists such as Emily Thompson have long valued Australian plants, including spiky banksia, spidery Grevillea and Swainsona formosa — also known as Strut’s desert pea, which resembles a multieyed visitor from another galaxy — but local designers were raised to regard native species as mundane and overly rustic.