HISTORY HISTORY Patrons John and Lynne Landy Executive Officer Jackie Courmadias Publication Australian Garden History, the official Journal of the Australian Garden History Society, is published five times a year Enquiries TollFree 1 800 678 446 Phone 03 9650 5043 Fax 03 9650 8470 Email i nfo@gard enhistorysociety.org.au Website vvww.gardenhistorysociety.org.au Postal Address AGHS, Gate Lodge 100 Birdwood Avenue MelbourneVictoria 3004 Subscriptions (GST INGLUSIVE) For I year Single $62 Family $85 Gorporate $200 Youth $20 (UNDER 25 YEARS OF AGE) Non-profit organisations $85 Advertising Rates 1/8 page $132 (2+ issues$l2l each) 1/4 page $220 (2+ issues$l98 each) 1/2 page $330 (2+ issues$275 each) Full page $550 (2+ issues$495 each) Inserts $440 for Australia-wide mailing Pro-rata for state-wide mailing Editorial Advisory Committee GONVENOR Ghristine Reid MEMBERS Richard Aitken Max Bourke Glenn Gooke Paul Fox David Jones Anne Latreille Megan Martin Prue Slatyer Ghristopher Vernon Design and printing Mariana Rollgejser Design (02) 6254 9666 Union Offset (02) 6295 4400 ISSN 1033-3673 NATIONAL MANAGEMENT COMMITTEE Chair Colleen Morris Vice-Chair John Dwyer Secretary Sarah Lucas Treasurer Malcolm Paul Elected Members Trisha Dixon John Dwyer Malcolm Paul Sarah Lucas Colleen Morris Christine Reid John Viska Lynne Walker State Representatives Keith Jorgensen QLD John DwyerVIC Wendy Joyner SA Ivan Saltmarsh TAS Jill Scheetz ACT Chris Webb NSW In rotation WA BRANCH CONTACTS ACT/Monaro/Riverina Tony Byrne PO Box 4055 Manuka ACT 2603 to ny by r n e@effect. net.au Queensland Keith Jorgensen 1 4 Petri n a St Eight Mile Plains QLD 41 13 Phone: 07 334 1 3933 jorgenkg@picknowl.com.au South Australia Wendy Joyner PO Box 7 Mannum SA 5238 08 8569 I 197 Southern Highlands Chris Webb PO Box 707 Moss Vale NSW 2577 Phone: 02 486 1 4899 cwebb@cwebb.com.au Sydney & Northern NSW Stuart Read Phone: 9873 8554 (w) stuart.read@heritage.nsw.gov.au Tasmania Ivan Saltmarsh 125 Channel Rd TaroonaTAS 7053 Phone: 03 6227 85 1 5 ivanof@bigpond.com Victoria Pamela Jellie 5 Claremont Gres CanterburyVIC3l26 pdJellie@hotmail.com Western Australia Sue Monger 9 Rosser Street Cottesloe WA 60 1 I susanmonger@yahoo.com.au From the chair Colleen Morris Producing a scholarly, engaging, and informative journal is one of the most important roles of the Australian Garden History Society. Ensuring a consistently high quality, while keeping within a realistic budget is always a concern of the National Management Committee. At the recent February meeting we were delighted to appoint new joint editors of Australian Garden History — Christina Dyson and Richard Aitken. The National Management Committee is delighted at the potential of this partnership and at the opportunity to deliver a much more substantial journal. At the same meeting the NMC moved to expand the number of journal pages per year from 120 pages to 144 pages and increase the colour content, commencing with the new joint editorship from volume 20, number 1. This will take our journal to a quarterly of four 3 6 -page issues, providing the editors with increased flexibility to publish slightly longer articles and giving readers a broader range of articles in each issue. Christina Dyson is a heritage consultant with a background in fine arts and a special interest in cultural landscapes. She has worked for prominent heritage firms in Sydney and Melbourne and completed her Grad. Dip. Hort. at Burnley in 2007. Christina is furthering her study of garden history as part of her M. Phil, at The University of Melbourne, where she is a scholarship student. Richard Aitken was co-editor of Australian Garden History from 1990 to 1992 and has been overseeing the production of the last three issues. Richard is currently undertaking a PhD at The University of Melbourne. A founding member of the Society, Richard has an impressive record both as an editor and an author, having edited The Oxford Companion to Australian Gardens and written Gardenesque^ Botanieal Kiehes^ and Seeds of Change. 1 would also like to acknowledge the contribution of Suzanne Hunt to the study of Australian garden history. Suzanne, who died in March 2008 after a long illness, was instrumental in forging a strong relationship between the Australian Garden History Society and the State Library of Victoria. One product of that relationship was publication of the brochure Garden History in Every Backyard to encourage donations of garden-related material, thus building an archive of garden history at the State Library of Victoria. Garden plans, catalogues, and other ephemera provide valuable insights to the social history of a period and this enthusiasm reflects Suzanne’s personal approach, embracing garden history within the fold of social history. Her positive and energetic outlook on the AGHS mission is one from which we can take great inspiration. Contents William Cobbett: cottager’s friend SILAS CLIFFORD-SMITH 4 Von Guerard’s Glenara: conservation crosses paths with garden history MICHAEL VARCOE-COCKS 7 Deconstructing Dr Lhotsky and his Monaro RICHARD AITKEN 10 Suzanne Hunt (1946-2008): an appreciation CHRISTINE REID 15 For the bookshelf 17 Just released 20 Jottanda 21 Diary dates 21 From wilderness to pleasure ground: discovering the garden and horticultural history of the Southern Highlands CHRIS WEBB 23 Cover image: Tableau of books known to have been influential in the nineteenth -century, particularly the works of Humboldt on Dr John Lhotsky (see story page 10). [Bibliostylist and Daguerreotyper: Richard Aitken] Page 2: Top and centre: Milton Park; bottom: Throsby Park (see story page 23). [Photos: Charlotte Webb] Australian Garden History V0I.19 N0.5 May/June 2008 3 William Cobbett: cottager’s friend Silas Clifford-Smith William Cobbett, English writer; democrat, and North American emigrant of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, was vitally concerned with gardening as it affected the agricultural classes. His books and opinions were known in early colonial Australia yet it is intriguing that he is rarely mentioned in modern historical accounts and his influence in Australia is yet to be fully documented. The son of a publican and small-scale farmer, William Cobbett (1763-1835) grew up in the English market town of Farnham during the years of the American Wars of Independence. His father was a rare local supporter of the American Revolution and from him William seems to have inherited his love for dissident opinion and unpopular causes. Cobbett’s interest for ornamental gardening began while working as a garden boy at Farnham Castle. A visiting gardener told him about the impressive royal gardens at Kew. He immediately decided to see them for himself, so the next morning he walked thirty miles to Richmond, and persuaded a Kew gardener to give him a job in the King’s garden. Cobbett only briefly worked at Kew Portrait sketch of William Cobbett, from L. Melville, The Life and Letters of William Cobbett {1^13 ) . 4 before returning home to work in the fields and gardens of his home county of Surrey. Eager to experience the world, Cobbett moved to Fondon in 1783 and secured a clerical position in a legal firm. He soon bored of clerking and the filth of Fondon and joined His Majesty’s 54th Regiment of Foot and was soon dispatched overseas. Cobbett arrived in Canada in 1785, and was involved in the border disputes with the infant United States of America. Cobbett spent seven years in Canada and rose up the ranks to become a regimental sergeant major. He returned to England in 1791 and prompdy left the army. Back home he publicly campaigned against the financial and physical abuses in the army, and soon made important enemies. When threatened with libel and physical assault, he escaped with his family to France. After six months in revolutionary France, he fled in 1792 to the United States and made his home in the capital, Philadelphia. He quickly established himself as a teacher of English to French migr s and also became a journalist and writer of political pamphlets, often writing under the pen name ‘Peter Porcupine’. During this period, Cobbett became increasingly fascinated with gardening and took great interest in horticultural developments in the infant republic. He was subsequently sued for libel and decided to return to his homeland. Back in England, Cobbett continued his writing career and established the Political Register newspaper, which soon became the largest selling paper in the country. Being the weekly paper’s principal writer Cobbett kept a close eye on what was happening in national politics, but he was increasingly troubled in how England had changed since the Napoleonic Wars and the arrival of the industrial revolution. His developing thoughts saw the Political Register move away from populist conservatism to become the most radical newspaper printed in Britain. Cobbett — Australian Garden History V0I.19 N0.5 May/June 2008 the democrat — also established a published account of debates in Parliament titled Cohhetfs Farlmmcntary Debates. Several years later, after bankruptcy, Cobbett sold this pioneering publishing title to his printer, a Mr Hansard. In 1817 Cobbett again fled to the United States. This time his home was Long Island near New York where he set himself up as a farmer. While living in Long Island he wrote The Ameriean Gardener (1821) one of the pioneering books on horticulture published in the United States. After living in North America (in total) for seventeen years, Cobbett returned to England. From 1821 to 1826 Cobbett began his famous horseback tours of the English countryside. Cobbett’s lively accounts of these journeys were popular with his readers and were later published in Rural Rides The author’s frank realist writing style, in this classic work of English literature, certainly offers a counter view to the romantic images being created by contemporary writers and artists such as Wordsworth, Austen, and Constable. While writing Rural Rides., Cobbett also published The Woodlands (1825), a book on silviculture that reflected his interest in trees. After his return to England in 1820 Cobbett established a plant nursery at Kensington where he grew many North American trees, such as the black locust {Robinia pseudoaeaeia). Another American species he successfully promoted was a variety of maize which he modestly called ‘Cobbett’s Corn’. Cobbett believed that maize was a wonder crop that had the potential to transform English agriculture. The problem was that Indian corn (as it was then known) was frost sensitive and with only a few months of guaranteed frost-free weather in England there was insufficient time for the maize cobs to mature. Cobbett’s son discovered a dwarf strain of maize growing in a French cottage garden and obtained some seed. Trials back in England found that it grew well through England’s shorter summer. To help sell this variety Cobbett published a book titled A Treatise on Cobbetfs Corn (1828), which as a gimmick he printed on paper made from maize fibre. The 1820s was the decade that saw Cobbett’s greatest writings on garden related matters. This period saw a massive increase in the British population and a corresponding rise in the middle classes. In response, there was increased interest in learning about plants and gardening. The best known garden writer of the time was John Claudius Eoudon (1783-1843), a prolific Scottish- born horticultural journalist who wrote extensively on garden matters. While Cobbett did not write as much as Eoudon on garden subjects, he was no slouch either. According to Cobbett authority. Associate Professor Ian Dyke, Cobbett ‘composed for publication a remarkable thirty million words — a total doubtless unmatched in the history of English letters’. Cobbett updated and expanded his earlier Ameriean Gardener for the local market. His English Gardener wzs first published in 1829 at a modest five shillings and was written for a well-heeled audience. In the introduction to a 1980 reprint, garden historian Anthony Huxley compared Cobbett’s English Gardener with other contemporary garden tomes, such as Eoudon’s Eneyelopaedia of Gardening: Compared with such, The English Gardener, with its eomparative paueity of illustrations, may appear a thin, dull volume. Tdowever, its limited size must have made it a pfood deal eheaper, and T imagine that CobbetCs general reputation must have eneoura^ed people of the time to buy it. A productive garden laid out in plats, borders, paths, and walks, illustrated and described in Cobbett’s The English Gardener ( 1829 ). Australian Garden History V0I.19 N0.5 May/June 2008 5 William Cobbett rewarding industrious labourers on one of his rural rides, from Robert Huish, Memoirs ofWillieim Cobbett (1829). The English Gardener was a best seller and went through many editions up to 1860. For modern readers, the most entertaining parts of this book are Cobbett’s condemnations of certain crops such as purslane, which he describes as a ‘mischievous weed, eaten by Frenchmen and pigs when they can get nothing else’. But by far his most despised plant was the potato, a plant introduction which Cobbett felt was indicative of the sad decline in the agricultural lands. He felt that the rural poor’s dependence on this crop would lead to calamity. Several years after his death, he was partially proven right, with the mass deaths in Ireland that followed the spread of the potato blight. Cobbett defined the health of the rural poor by a simple test. Happiness for a rural worker was defined by access to the three B’s — bacon, bread, and beer. To Cobbett these were the three clear measures of agricultural happiness. This homespun belief may explain why Cobbett wrote Cottage Eeonomy (1822), his best selling book during his lifetime. In this cheaply priced volume, Cobbett taught the cottager some of the skills needed to be self sufficient, including instructions on how to make bread, brew beer, keep livestock, and how to weave hats out of grasses. It is highly likely that copies of this humble work accompanied many migrants bound for the English speaking colonies. Cobbett’s influence in Australia is less well known. Cobbett never visited Australia and made litde mention of Australian plants and gardening in his many publications. But the Australian colonies were starved of skilled gardeners so it is understandable that there was a need for 6 gardening advice. One of the earliest local works to provide gardening guidance was the Australian Poeket Almanaek of 1825. This volume included a long extract on Cobbett’s views on successful hedge making, which had originally been published in his Ameriean Gardener. Apart from republished extracts, Cobbett’s garden themed books were certainly being imported into the colony during the 1820s and 1830s, and possibly well into the middle years of the century. Sydney bookseller James Tegg was advertising Cobbett’s English Gardener in the Sydney Herald as early as February 1837, several years after Cobbett’s death. It is hard to say how much influence Cobbett had on early Australian gardens but looking at artistic images of productive gardens created in the early decades of the nineteenth century, many are similar to the small holdings known by Cobbett in England and North America. Gardening in the early years of the Australian colonies was mainly about survival and self efficiency rather than ornamentation, so it is logical that the writings of William Cobbett, which promoted self sufficiency for rich and poor, would have appealed to many local setders. Silas Clifford- Smith has admired Willi am Cobbett since his school days in England. This abridged article is based on a lecture he gave at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney, in 2006. The author wishes to thank Professor Richard Clough, Richard Atken, Megan Martin, and Colleen Morris for help in research. Australian Garden History V0I.19 N0.5 May/June 2008 Von Guerard's Glenara: conservation crosses paths with garden history Michael Varcoe-Cocks Conservation by the National Gallery of Victoria of its much-loved von Gu rard painting of Glenara has been aided by detailed research uncovering a fascinating sidelight into garden history The property Glenara has long attracted the attention of garden lovers, not only for the original splendour of Walter Clark’s garden but also for its early-twentieth century associations with noted rosarian and plant breeder Alister Clark. The portrayal in oils by Eug ne von Gu rard, Mr Clarkes Station, Deep Creek, near Keilor, completed in 1867, is known from comparison with contemporary photographs to be a remarkably accurate rendering of its subject, but just how closely observed has now been confirmed by detailed research undertaken in connection with recent conservation of the painting. As a conservator of paintings at the National Gallery of Victoria it is my responsibility to care for and, if required, conserve works in the collection produced between 1850 and 1950. During 2004 it was my good fortune to conserve Eug ne von Gu rard’s oil painting Mr ClarkS Station, Deep Creek, near Keilor. The close examination of any painting regularly yields new information that begins a journey of further research and this painting has been no exception. Eug ne von Gu rard (1811-1901) studied at the highly influential Kunstakademie (art academy) in D sseldorf where landscape painting was understood as a scientific discipline largely inspired by the writings of naturalist and explorer Alexander Humboldt. After von Gu rard’s arrival in Australia in 1852, he spent 18 months on the Ballarat goldfields before settling in Melbourne. Here he established himself as a leading figure in the Melbourne art community but he also participated in broader scientific circles. By the Eug ne von Gu rard (born Austria 1811, lived in Australia 1852-82, Europe 1882-1901, died England 1901), Mr Clarkes Station, Deep Creek, near Keilor, 1867 (oil on canvas: 68.4 x 122.0 cm) [National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne: purchased with the assistance of the National Gallery Society of Victoria and Mr and Mrs Solomon Lew, 1986], Australian Garden History V0I.19 N0.5 May/June 2008 7 time he visited Glenara he was a councillor of the Royal Society of Victoria and associated with all branches of science. Through personal sketching tours and official scientific expeditions von Gu rard visited remote regions of the colony, undertaking detailed drawings that observed vegetation, geology, and topography of the landscape. These drawings were later used as the basis of paintings produced in his Melbourne studio. Von Gu rard’s aptitude for scientific precision was also suited to producing homestead depictions for prosperous landholders, whose commissioning eyes demanded a high level of verisimilitude. Of these homestead portraits the portrayal of Glenara is unique in its attention to the garden and is a clear testament to the success of the acclimatisation program that preoccupied the prospering colony. Glenara’s house and garden paths were designed by architects Purchas and Swyer, and completed in 1857. The picturesque setting, vineyard. collection of exotic plant species, and decorative ornamentation scattered throughout the garden ensured a setting of both agricultural and domestic beauty. The 1868 Guide for Excursionists dcchiYcd\ Should the tourist essay to reach the hamlet of Eulla^ ...he will see farms and homesteads such as will remind him of the richest agricultural counties of En£fland; notably one belon^in^ to Mr. Walter Clark, which for picturesque beauty is not surpassed in Australia. When von Gu rard first visited Glenara in 1864 the original plantings were becoming well established. Responding to the vision of J.C. Loudon’s writings, the garden was itself recognisable as being a work of art — and it clearly captured the imagination of the artist. The nineteenth- century relationship between gardening- and- science echoed von Gu rard’s own vision of science-and-art, and it would seem the artist and patron formed a friendship that contributed to the success of the painting. Comparative details from the preliminary drawing for Mr Clarkes Station, Deep Creek, near Keilor, the final painting, and an infrared photograph of the painting. [Preliminary drawing from Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney; painting National Gallery of Victoria], • ■■■» i ' i' Michael Varcoe- Cocks is the Conservator of Paintings (1850-1950) at the National Gallery of Victoria where he has worked for over a decade. He received a Bachelor of Applied Science (Conservation of Cultural Material) degree, with a major in paintings conservation, from the University of Canberra, and has a Bachelor of Fine Art (Painting) degree from the Victorian College of the Arts, The University of Melbourne. He has a particular interest in the technical art history. 8 Australian Garden History V0I.19 N0.5 May/June 2008 ZDL PXXI7f.l5-l6 Von Gu rard sketched and undertook plein-air studies of Deep Creek and the rocky outcrops along the distant escarpment. He also showed interest in the practical workings of the garden and made a close study of the construction of the foot bridge seen in the valley below the house. With a commission secured he began a highly detailed drawing which would form the basis of the final painting. A large single sheet of this drawing is held by the Mitchell Library in Sydney — it records the house and immediate surroundings but only accounts for two thirds of the final composition. During my research in the Mitchell collection I found two additional sheets that were used by von Gu rard to extend the drawing and document the entire view as seen in the painting. Significantly, one sheet contained a key with shorthand symbols that von Gu rard used to identify species of trees surrounding the house and garden. Other inscriptions documented colour, geological forms, and individual trees. A diagram indicating north was included to enable shadows cast by a late afternoon sun to be accurately included in the painting. This preliminary drawing is undated but the inclusion of Walter Clark’s wife Annie, places it prior to October 1865 (when she tragically died during the birth of their fifth child). In the final painting Clark is shown alone with his children and three -year- old Alister is seen presenting his father a bouquet. As part of my process of investigating the oil painting I performed an x-ray and infrared examination. Studying these documents I noticed a formation of concealed trees that were initially included but later painted over by the artist. The elongated section of lawn shown at the right of the garden had initially been part of a larger orchard, covered in rows of mature fruit trees. (These trees were the continuation of the surviving row at the start of the lawn and those seen further uphill to the right.) Prompted by this discovery the preliminary drawing was re-examined and it became obvious that the grove had also had been drawn but then either erased or crossed- out of this drawing done on location. It is inconceivable that a skilled draftsman intent on such fidelity as the annotation of species and the capturing of the individual character of specific items could make such a major error. The only clear explanation was that a change had seemingly occurred in the garden once the picture had begun to be painted and the artist was required to return to the property to adjust his drawing and then the painting. Using the dates from von Gu rard’s sketchbooks we can in fact establish that he returned in December 1866, eighteen months after his previous visit. Australian Garden History V0I.19 N0.5 May/June 2008 At this point my attention focussed on four trees that were part of the new planting used as edging at the far end of the new lawn. These appeared noticeably smaller and the planting sparse compared to the rest of the garden. Seeking botanical help, I visited Roger Spencer at Melbourne’s National Herbarium who made the important observation of a small inscription alongside the trees. This read ‘Cipruss’, with the double ‘ss’ being inscribed in the old manner of double ‘//’. Fortunately Walter Clark was a fastidious man and retained receipts from the accounts of nursery proprietors. These document his purchase at this time of several ‘Cupressus lambertiana’, that is Cupressus macrocftrpd (Monterey cypress), following von Gu rard’s earlier visit. (Although purchased from prominent seed merchant William Adamson, catalogues from this period state that Adamson was the sole agent for Messrs G. Brunning &: Son who were a noted promoter of the Monterey cypress and probably the original source of the trees.) In the final painting the newly expanded leisure area is seen enclosed by two-foot cypresses distinguishable by their pyramidal form, pointed apex, and dark green foliage. On close examination the sparse coverage of the juvenile foliage can even be detected, suggested by light penetrating the young branches. Dating this change in the garden to late 1866 helps understand its possible motivation. A large area of open lawn would have been a domestic practicality given the expanding family’s needs. It may have also been that the maturity of the fruit trees provided sufficient produce to warrant a reduction in their acreage and reconsideration of the use of this space. However, the ambition of Walter Clark’s personal vision for his estate, as it was to be portrayed in von Gu rard’s painting, may equally have been a plausible cause for change. Although we may never know the true reason, it seems certain that between 1865 and 1866 a section of the large orchard at Glenara was replaced by a formal lawn allowing the linear planting of ornamental species to be revealed to the artist’s view. This survives in the painted form as quintessentially Gardenesque planting which was at that time at a zenith of popularity. I hope that you can take the opportunity to view this masterpiece and marvel at the fidelity of the rendering, the expansive vision of the garden’s creators, and even ponder the intriguing new evidence of early change to the planting design. Eug ne von Gu rard’s Mr Clark’s Station, Deep Creek, near Keilor (1867) is currently on view at Ian Potter Centre NGV: Australia, located at Federation Square, Melbourne. Deconstructing Dr Lhotsky and his Monaro Richard Aitken The Society’s recent excursion to the Monaro has prompted this examination of a forgotten European explorer to this part of south-east New South Wales, natural historian Dr John Lhotsky who in 1 834 made an audacious trip to the Australian Alps. A colleague in the academy recently told me that I needed to ‘unpack a bit more theory’. His words were still a dull echo in the outer cranial reaches when at a recent ephemera bazaar I was day- dreaming about colonial naturalist John Lhotsky and came across a plain-looking box marked ‘all books $10’. Now I can’t resist a bargain like this, and after passing up the chance to buy several of Sir Walter Scott’s Waverley Novels, the last book in the box — ^in a mid- nineteenth century German binding — looked suffidendy enticing. I glanced at the spine: ‘Hegel’s / Werke / 10. 2. Ubib.’; and then at the title page: Vorlesun 0 en her die Aesthetiek. Are you with me.^ This was the key text in Hegelian aesthetic theory, much invoked by garden history theorists, but so rarely seen in its original manifestation. Box - unpacking - Hegel - theory. Had not Madame Lil’lka written in my stars earlier that week: ‘Answers to your problems will be found in unexpected places, lacunae filled, enigmas resolved.’ Where was 1 to start with my newfound astrological awareness and its potential links to garden theory.^ Could Hegel be the key.^ German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) was not entirely convinced by gardens, especially for the manner in which contemporary designers were attempting to elevate art over nature. For Hegel this was insufficient in an aesthetic creation — art demanded something altogether more demonstrable than tawdry human intervention in nature: gardens could never compare with the sublimity of nature. It was hard to see how Hegel could be a patron saint of garden history and, after all, 1 had as yet no proof that he was in any way influential on Dr Lhotsky. With Hegel thus disposed of, there was still a nagging voice. The plural unfilled ‘lacunae’ so confidently foretold in the stars troubled me, those Leo energies unsatisfied with merely a singular 10 filling. I cast around for ideas, my head spinning in an academically induced frenzy. If Lhotsky had perhaps not read Hegel, had he read Humboldt I wondered.^ Trembling with excitement I pulled my copy of Humboldt’s Cosmos off the shelf and found the title page stamped with the unmistakable words ‘Walter Scott’. I nearly died. I’d forgotten all about this providential provenance, the book having been sourced many years ago in Tasmania, land of milk and honey. Great Scott! What about Sir Walter.^ Could he not count as a theoretical lacuna.^ Now as it turns out, the title page of each of my four Humboldtian volumes also bore the neat handwritten inscription ‘James Scott / Launceston / 1 3th Septr 1852’. Mine was the English translation published between 1849 and 1852 and if nothing else, it proved that Scott was up-to-date with his reading. Yet Sir Walter Scott was already dead by this date — so who was his colonial namesake.^ It turned out to be the son of James Scott and nephew of Thomas Scott, both surveyors in Van Diemen’s Land. Thomas Scott (1800-1855) was in fact a kinsman of Sir Walter Scott — according to the Australian Dietionary of Biography — and his brother James (18 10-1884) had been a clerk to Sir Walter Scott at Melrose Abbey, Scotland, a link recounted by Burns & Skemp in Van Diemen^s Land Correspondents {1961). (Thomas Scott it was who gave the Tasmanian town of Deloraine its name, taking it from Scott’s Lay of the Last Minstrel.) So it should be no surprise that my volumes of Humboldt had been passed down from father to son. If Scott did not fill the void, the answer must lie with Humboldt. Prussian- born Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) was the pre-eminent naturalist- explorer of his era. A friend of Georg Forster (who had travelled to the South Pacific on Cook’s second voyage), he studied at Hamburg, Australian Garden History V0I.19 N0.5 May/June 2008 T A V K A K bS lil xV ih; ii DARON HUMBOLDT. NEW^YDUKi j. t j. jujirfiHi a. ci^ll?F‘STiit£l. mas. Humboldt’s Travels and Researches became available to the English speaking world in 1832-33 with editions published in London and New York, in the years when Lhotsky was in Brazil. This edition was edited by Scottish naturalist William MacGillivray, whose son John settled in Sydney following explorations to the South Pacific. Freiberg, and Jena. His name was made by explorations during 1799-1804 in central and southern America with Aim Bonpland (subsequently superintendent of Jos phine’s garden at Malmaison). In particular, his ascent of Chimborazo in the Ecuadorian Andes — then believed to be the highest mountain in the world — ensured international fame. (Apart from Alpine scenery, few things were as sublime as volcanoes.) Even in the Australian colonies during the 1820s and 1830s, Humboldt’s exploits were keenly reported in the local press. It was, after all, a period when South rather than North America was of far more significance to Australia mainly due to the importance of Rio de Janiero and its role as a port midway between Europe and Australia (comparable in that respect to Cape Town). Humboldt’s role as mentor or inspiration to those embarking on a vocation in the natural sciences was inestimable. And this outlook provided a clue to Dr Ehotsky and his ambitions. Australian Garden History V0I.19 N0.5 May/June 2008 John Ehotsky (1795-1866) had arrived in New South Wales in 1832 following eighteen months spent collecting natural history specimens on commission in Brazil. Born in the Galacian city of Ew w or Eviv (now part of the Ukraine), Ehotsky came to personify the cosmopolite Eeopolitan (so named from Ew w’s earlier name, Eemberg, the lion city). His family was from Western Bohemia, he attended grammar school in Krakow, and then furthered his studies at universities in Ew w, Prague, Berlin, Paris, and Eeipzig. His doctoral degree was awarded in 1819 by the University of Jena for research into the flora of Bohemia. Botany became a lifelong passion — one amongst many — and John Ehotsky later received fellowship of the Royal Botanical Society of Bavaria. More than just botany, Ehotsky was keenly interested in horticulture, gardens, and landscape scenery. ‘Wherever Nature herself presents the aspect of a gorgeous garden’, he wrote ruefully of his stay in South America, ‘man does not pay much attention to horticulture.’ Ehotsky made an ambitious start to his colonial career, exhibiting natural history specimens, lobbying (unsuccessfully) for the position of Colonial Botanist, and provisioning an expedition to the Monaro district and onwards to the so-called Australian Alps. It was this last exploit that was to give Ehotsky a small measure of lasting fame in Australia and one that should be celebrated by garden and landscape historians. Ehotsky started from Sydney in mid- January 1834 with a well-laden cart and four servants, one of whom — ‘Keif’ — ^was ‘groom, tailor, and plant collector’. That a ‘tailor’ should be amongst the party hints that this was no ordinary expedition: keeping up appearances was paramount to the self- absorbed traveller. Even before the party had left the confines of Sydney — between Grose Earm and the Eiverpool Road — Ehotsky took an ‘aerial bath’ to cure his ‘injured lungs’ from the effects of dust. ‘I bared the upper part of my body’, wrote the enervated traveller, ‘and in that state walked for half an hour in the currents of the air among the trees. The effect was excessively beneficial, and I felt the muscles of my thorax so much invigorated, that I repeated the experiment during my journey with the most beneficial result.’ Keif’s role as plant collector was paramount to an important object of the expedition — the collection of natural history specimens for scientific and commercial purposes. Eollowing surveyor Charles Sturt’s map, Ehotsky proceeded through the Cow Pastures and thence south-east towards Goulburn. Plant collecting took place throughout the journey and on his return Ehotsky was indebted ‘for much information connected with Botanical 11 nomenclature’ to Colonial Botanist Richard Cunningham, ‘who stands unrivalled in the knowledge of Australian plants, amongst all the persons we have met with in this Colony’. Once past the Cow Pastures, Lhotsky was surrounded by only ‘the simple and pure scenes of nature’, although at Bong Bong he fumed about the fenced land grants which precluded him pitching his tent: These fences, quite useless ut present, have been erected by the gratuitous labour of prisoners, to enrich further people who are already in comfortable eireumstanees; whilst the poor emigrant, the new comer whom Great Britain vomits out, as well for her relief as his benefit, must despair in the same country, without ^ettin^ a sinpfle inch of land of the vast patrimony of Australia. Lhotsky’s descriptions of the landscape seemed to vary with his mood. Past Sutton Forest he mused that quarterly produce fairs or markets ‘would vivify in some degree the death-like monotony and silence of the Australian interior’ while only hours later he was rhapsodic in his contemplation of a continuous superb Forest, chiefly composed of Eucalyptus ... [whose] rather round leaves ...as well as the smaller branches, are covered with a mellowish silvery dew, and present therefore in their ensemble the most curious, and rather enehantment-like appearance, as in lar^e masses, the ^reen softens to a mild blueish white, which combined with the surrounding azure of our sky, makes the whole like one of the scenes of the pfardens of Armida. Here Lhotsky was invoking the palace of the enchantress Armida who, in Tasso’s poem Jerusalem Delivered (1580), bewitched the Crusader Rinaldo and who in turn — ^when the spell was broken — overpowered her by his love and persuaded her to become a Christian. Such associations peppered Lhotsky’s narrative and, as we will see, also his naming of physical features. A little further on the party paused at ‘a fine although circumscribed valley called Garner’s Station, intersected by a few small boscages of a Banksia, which I never saw before, and flanked at the N. E., by a highly picturesque range of hills, displayed itself before my eyes’. Even if the January heat was stifling, the thermometer ‘deranged’, and a 7-foot red-bellied black snake too close to the tents for comfort, lyricism was restored by the cool of the evening ‘in this Edenlike valley’: The evening after clear hot days are in Australia indeed heavenly; there reigns then a sort of 12 metallic resonance in the air, the majestic trunks of our white-barked Eucalyptus look as if made of massive silver, and their tender ramifications and leaves show to a remarkable degree of perspicuity in the extreme clearness of the atmosphere. In such nights I reposed on my cloak often until a late hour at my watch fire, the feelings of past and present, the musings of future times overwhelmed my imagination, a mental operation which it appears impossible to be denied to the spirit, when surrounded by such scenes. Crossing the Wollondilly River — ^which ‘contrasted agreeably’ with the fine open forest — Ehotsky contemplated the scene: ‘it appeared as if a vast mass of clear and pellucid dust was transpiercing the umbrage of the forest’ he wrote of the Goulburn Plains. Such reflections required careful consideration. ‘I therefore sent my party forward’, Ehotsky confided to his readers, ‘and sat down comfortably to analize [tir] and enjoy this new, and hitherto unseen sight.’ Elsewhere Ehotsky was confronted by the ' mind-blunting monotony^ of the trees — the contradictions he sensed in the Australian landscape pointed to inadequacies even amongst much revered figures of botany. Of the ‘magnificent scene’ he represented as the Armida gardens, Ehotsky wrote candidly: ‘I must confess sincerely, that as to representing nature systematically, even the works of Humboldt and Martins, meet not with my entire approbation’. And, Ehotsky continued, ‘Although I cannot develope this statement here at any length, the fact that Australia possesses no shade, is one of the most characteristic features of its Botanical Geography and Physiology.’ A land without shade was like a man without a shadow, unearthly and profoundly disturbing. ‘However, what is stable, or uniform in Australian nature.^’ he asked rhetorically. It was about this stage that Ehotsky met the first Aboriginal person he had encountered on the trip, a depleted population that he contrasted with the tribes Governor Phillip saw at Sydney Cove: ‘I consider this extinction of an entire race of men, as one of the greatest blames of all the different governments, which have succeeded each other in these Colonies.’ Erom this, it can be gathered that Ehotsky was troubled by colonial relations with the Indigenous population, which was depleted but self-evidently not ‘extinct’. At Eake George, he heard Aboriginal stories of ancestors in canoes above the tree tops, and compared this with ancient beliefs of a deluge held also by Egyptians and ‘Inkas’. That Ehotsky was a sympathetic observer and recorder of local traditions is clearly seen in his arrangement of Song of the Women of the Menero Tribe, Near the Australian Alps, Australian Garden History V0I.19 N0.5 May/June 2008 which he published on his return to Sydney in late 1834. Such songs, Lhotsky claimed, ‘for majestic and deep melancholy, would not dishonor a Beethoven or a Handel’ — comparisons rich in humanist parallels. Reaching the Limestone Plains (future site of Canberra), Lhotsky stayed at John Campbell’s outstation, ‘a clean, romantic little house, overhung with vines, the last one with window panes and such like comforts, as it were at the end of the world’. It was here, Lhotsky observed with prescience, that ‘at no distant point, a fine town will exist’ (even if it did not ultimately unite ‘Spencer’s Gulph’, Sydney, and Twofold Bay as this prediction supposed.) Yet Lhotsky correctly saw the locality as a transport hub linking Sydney, Yass, and the ‘Menero Downs’. This was also on the extreme southern edge of Governor Darling’s ‘Nineteen Counties’, beyond which occupation of land was at that date supposedly prohibited. Yet, as Lhotsky records, the ‘Menero Downs’ was already home to numbers of overseers and prisoners, at least 35,000 sheep, and a proportionate number of catde. Lhotsky proceeded after a pause at Limestone to the ‘Mikelego Plains’ en route to the Monaro. Just as the party was on its way pandemonium broke out. Concurrently as a snake disturbed the peace, ‘a rather new appearance presented itself to me, and this was two settlers on horse- back passing from Menero’. They were habited in quite a bush-like undress, their tetherin£f rope was wound round the horses neek, some tin pots for boiling tea suspended from their halters, their bedding apparatus plaeed at the baek part of their saddles, and muskets and da^^ers by their sides— ^ave these travellers a truly Australian appearanee. The party wended their way through the kangaroo grass, constantly stopping to observe and collect specimens of natural history. Lhotsky noted approvingly trees of Callitris endlieheri (‘Old Man’s Oak’) and collected eagerly — these specimens are now in Cambridge University Herbarium. In this uncharted territory, the path was not clear, and in a ‘melancholy, solitary valley’ he and his companion Walker lost their way. Guns fired every quarter hour by his party allowed him to find the camp and this reunion was rewarded by extra allowances and ‘some moral incitements’ for his men (in this case, reading aloud of Robinson Crusoe — ‘the unattainable, but not therefore the less enviable prototype for every one of them’). Cards were played, a jewsharp sounded, and Lhotsky relaxed with his pipe, gazing ‘at the silent but eternal rotations of the nocturnal lights Australian Garden History V0I.19 N0.5 May/June 2008 above me’. ‘There’, he soliloquised ‘the ephemeric destinies of men are recorded.’ ‘It is usual among the men on Menero, to pass their Sundays in mutual calls, having shaved and cleaned themselves and swept out their huts’, Lhotsky observed briskly — ^jolted from his reverie — and ‘the whole presents a rather patriarchal appearance ... all looks extremely masculine, [and] the conversation ... is mostly confined to the topic “in such and such a hut they have grog.’” Passing through dry barren plains, which scorched by the heat of the summer ‘presented a yellow autumnal appearance’, the party at length arrived at a creek (later known as the Bredbo River) which Lhotsky noted as ‘the northern limits of Menero’. ‘As Menero will constitute ere long, some of the most important counties or dukedoms of Australia’, he christened the watercourse ‘Earl Grey’s Creek’ in commemoration of Britain’s Secretary of State for the Colonies (‘that great historical personage of our age’). As far as the pieturesque is eoneerned, nothing ean be more beautiful than these seeluded banks, the flesh-red masses of granite, resplendin^ in a semi-tropieal sun, and eovered with tender shrubs and flowers, the tepid shade of the winding stream, and a solitude which transforms the passing beholder into the Proprietor of all he sees. ‘O! that such desert were my dwelling place’ he exclaimed in Byronic rapture. Past Ballebalaing, Lhotsky named ‘a solitary, perfectly triangular hill ... surrounded by a perfectly level fiat’ Masonic Hill, ‘in commemoration of an ancient and powerful association’. Such associationalism — a feature of the early nineteenth- century picturesque — ^was again invoked when in the Alps Lhotsky named Ossian’s Seat after the fabled Scottish bard. Local nomenclature also clearly interested the polymathic traveller. Lhotsky identified ‘Meneru’ as the specific name of a place just north of Cooma, but that the Indigenous inhabitants called an extensive area ‘Monaroo’ — to further distinguish local geography, Lhotsky gave the plains the name ‘Menero’. From ‘Mikelego’ to Bombala the district was studded with small outstations. ‘Dr Reid’s tent presented a thorough Colonial appearance’, Lhotsky observed, ‘being about fifteen feet long, and supported by strong poles, where tea-chests and rum-casks served as tables and chairs.’ As the huts were commonly near water-holes, ‘where a quantity of the best humus and alluvial soil abounds’, kitchen gardens were often cultivated. 13 At Mutong (the last out- station in the direction of the Alps), Lhotsky was astonished to find ‘the finest sort of water-melons, cabbages, and other vegetables’. Of the local Aboriginal tribes, Lhotsky recorded a diet including yams and other roots: ‘the Menero tribe is already very weak, consisting of about fifty men, they are entirely tame (indeed not civilized, but corrupted), [who] wander as far as Yass and the Limestone Plains.’ And with this observation, Lhotsky’s Journal abruptly ended, after just 118 pages or seven and a half sheets of printed matter. (Its publication proved to be a protracted affair, and such was the rarity of complete sets that only two are known to survive — the last changed hands in 2006 for over half a million dollars.) And alas, Lhotsky’s fortunes did not prosper. He remained in Sydney until 1836, when he chanced his hand in Van Diemen’s Land. Ronald Gunn wrote unfiatteringly to William Hooker ‘be cautious of him. He is 1 am sorry to say a Black Sheep.’ Despite seeing himself rather immodestly ‘as the werner of Australia’ (invoking the famous German geologist), Lhotsky departed Australia in 1838 for London, disappointed that the colonies had not been sufficiently receptive to appreciate his special talents. The naming of the plant genus Lhotsky a (by Schauer) in 1836 was a notable contrast to the dim reception accorded by the Australian scientific establishment. Lhotsky was typically upbeat, and took out an advertisement in Hobart’s Trumpeter newspaper to publicise the commemoration and his elevation to the botanical pantheon. ‘Having thus received the highest honor which science can bestow’, Lhotsky crowed, ‘my name, conjointly with the Banksias, Flindersia, Kingia, &c. will not be lost in the annals of the Colonies.’ (Sadly for Lhotsky’s memory, the genus was absorbed into Labilliardi re’s Calytrix in 1987 — Lhotskya erieoides [now Calytrix aeutifoliaj a small erect shrub with fine soft leaves and clusters of small white bottiebrushes or starflowers, is still available in the nursery trade.) In London Lhotsky took the opportunity to reflect on his Australian (and Brazilian) adventures, becoming a correspondent of J.C. Loudon — a link seemingly not noted in existing Lhotskyean scholarship. His articles in the GardeneCs Magazine included ‘Notes, horticultural and agricultural, on the Brazils and New Holland’; ‘Some remarks on Brazilian esculents and fruits’ and ‘On the olive and date plantations in New South Wales’, all published in 1839 and each the work of a keen acclimatiser. In retrospect, Lhotsky has not been accorded a place in the great white male narrative of Australia. 14 His published Journal was eccentric, his manner rather tactless, his discoveries mostly inexact, his politics (although not discussed here) too radical, and his claims easily sequestered by louder later voices. If his significance has not therefore been one of dignified posterity his colonial activities were certainly ones of character and verisimilitude. He was active in a decade when colonial society emerged from its military yoke to become a vibrant and eclectic group dominated by free settlers. His Journal and frequent writings in the colonial press were full of optimism and life. His journey through the vicissitudes of colonial society is perhaps more telling than dozens of other apparently worthy lives still celebrated. The Sydney and Hobart Town of his age were in their cultural infancy, and Lhotsky blazed a path, initiating the first art union, publishing arguably the earliest article in an overseas journal on Australia’s fine arts, exhibiting his natural history collections in banks and other institutional buildings in the days before the widespread advent of museums and galleries. Lhotsky dreamed of colonial greatness but his Humboltian ideal was confined to a select few who played within the rules. I was in a Suduko-induced trance when the editor tapped me on the shoulder and told me it was time to move. Looking up, the first book I noticed was the 1915 edition of Petit Larousse^ the august French encyclopaedia. And there was Bombala in bold headline type, jumping out from the map of Australie with the accompanying text confidently proclaiming of the distant nation that ‘La capital est Bombala’. I suspect that Lhotsky would have excused this embarrassing French faux pas^ an instance of wires crossed. In a spirit of scientific generosity, he may have even applauded the choice as one he would have made given the chance of further exploration of his beloved ‘Menero Plains’. Perhaps we should all go out and plant a starflower in memory of this worthy colonial natural historian. Note on sources Lhotsky’s Journey is available in a scholarly edition, introduced and edited by Alan Andrews (1979), and I have relied heavily on this source. This edition also includes a full bibliography listing over 700 works by or about Lhotsky. For an approachable account of Humboldt travels see Douglas Botting’s Humboldt and the Cosmos (1973). Hegelian theory is considered by David Cooper in No 1 Kingsbury & Tim Richardson (eds), Vista: the eulture and polities of gardens (2005). Australian Garden History V0I.19 N0.5 May/June 2008 Suzanne Hunt (1946-2008): an appreciation Christine Reid Mourners at the recent service of thanksgiving for Suzanne Hunt might have been a little surprised by the organ music as they filed into Toorak Uniting Church. Instead, perhaps, of calm reverential Bach, the strains of Percy Grainger’s jaunty Country Gardens rang out. More than any words, Grainger’s spirited setting captured the essence of this extraordinary woman. Suzanne’s many enthusiasms included the Australian Garden History S ociety — and how fortunate we have been in that. Suzanne’s fascination with the history of Australian gardens and gardening began through inauspicious circumstances, as she explained in the preface to Gardenesque: ‘It was a sea change forced on me by ill health ... as a social historian and curator, my professional interests focused upon the cultural aspirations of people’s lives and the material artefacts and archives derived from these endeavours.’ These interests led her to research the relatively unknown story of gardening in Australia and, in the process, to the Society. With great enthusiasm she sought out gardeners and asked them to speak about their gardens: such personal content imbued the 1999 Geelong seminar From Gumhoots to Gaiters vAtiCn she masterminded. Her conviction and support of the garden history’s importance as a field of study ultimately lead to Gardenesque^ the major 2004 exhibition showcasing the State Library of Victoria’s holdings of gardening- related material. Suzanne believed that the history of gardening incorporated the story of everyday life in Australia and gardening was a major part of her everyday life. Nearly 20 years ago, she and her husband Robin, bought a former orchardist’s cottage at Main Ridge, on the Mornington Peninsula. After recurring bouts of illness (which continued until her recent death) she ‘decided to try her hand at landscaping’, using Russell Page as her mentor and guide. While in hospital recovering from one of her five major operations, I think she committed Page’s The Edueation of a Gardener to memory. The hallmarks of Page’s work — the inspiration of tradition, the relationship of texture to colour and form, and the pursuit of artistic expression — ^were all understood brilliantly by Suzanne in her garden making. At Akenfield Farm, Suzanne put Page’s theories into practice. The beautifully maintained garden descends in a series of grassy terraces, defined by the structure of hedges and steps, and coming to an end on the fern-fringed banks of Main Creek. A magnificent flight of steps became an inspirational link with Australian garden tradition. Suzanne called them her ‘eat-your-heart-out- Edna- Walling’ steps, acknowledging the handsome stonework which formed a signature of many Walling gardens. A crab apple walk of ‘Golden Hornet’ pays homage to the memory of Joan Law- Smith and her much- admired garden, Bolobek. Ever alert to historical connections, Suzanne used H.V. McKay farm gates, not only a link with Australian farming traditions but also testifying to Robin Hunt’s family connections with H.V. McKay of Sunshine Harvester fame. Suznnne^s own discovery was that garden-making is a deeply spiritual activity Suzanne insisted that she was not a flower gardener, showing an instinctive grasp of the ‘less is more’ principle. In her country weekend garden she wanted plant textures, foliage, and seasonal beauty to create interest. The trees — a legacy of previous owners — are superb specimens: oaks, pin oaks, maples, birches, a weeping mulberry, beech, and elm, and century-old camellias, forming a wonderful framework. In her own garden she revealed herself as the creator of a tranquil and harmonious space where a visitor, in Page’s words, ‘really desires to wander and make discoveries’. Australian Garden History V0I.19 N0.5 May/June 2008 15 Suzanne’s own discovery was that garden-making is a deeply spiritual activity. Creatively visualising her next landscaping project or settling on a planting scheme was, for her, an escape from the troubles of bodily suffering. Suzanne and Robin opened the garden many times for charity, sharing with friends and groups such as the AGHS. Indeed, it was typical that at one of the most recent openings, last October, they shared the gate money between Australia’s Open Garden Scheme and the Society. Suzanne’s own research and enthusiastic embrace of garden history Suzanne Hunt in print 1984 Dorothy McNeill and Robin & Suzanne Hunt, The McKays ofDrummartin and Sunshine^ revised ed., privately published, Melbourne, 1984. 2000 Garden History in Every Backyard^ brochure, Australian Garden History Society (Victorian Branch) and the State Library of Victoria, Melbourne, n.d. [2000]. “‘With seeds in their pockets” archives seminar: a review’, Australian Garden History^ 12 (3), Nov/Dec 2000, pp.19-20. 2001 Suzanne Hunt & John Hawker, ‘Claremont: a “Federation villa garden’”, Australian Garden History, 12 (4), Jan/Feb 2001, pp.9-20; also separately published by the Australian Garden History Society (Victorian Branch). ‘Vegetable plots and pleasure gardens of the Victorian goldfields’, in Iain McCalman, Alexander Cook, & Andrew Reeves (eds). Gold: forgotten histories and lost objects of Australia, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2001, pp. 267-82. ‘Where the sweet Australian peas bloomed: state school gardens in Victoria 1901-1914’, in Georgina Whitehead (ed.). Planting the Nation, Australian Garden History Society, Melbourne, 2001, pp. 11-30. encouraged enthusiasm in others, prompting many people to donate gardening-related documents to the State Library of Victoria, thus ensuring their preservation and accessibility. She hoped that her work might promote the idea that garden history can be found in ‘everyone’s backyard — not just in the large gardens of the rich and famous’. ‘We blossom and flourish as leaves on the tree’ ran one of Suzanne’s chosen thanksgiving hymns. The AGHS has also blossomed and fiourished as a result of Suzanne Hunt’s extraordinary contribution. 2002 ‘Landscapes with an Australian character: the work of Glen Wilson’, Australian Garden History, 13 (6), May/June 2002, pp. 17-20. ‘Claremont’, ‘Community gardens’, ‘Hoses and sprinklers’, ‘Lawn mower’, ‘Tools’, in Richard Aitken & Michael Looker (eds). The Oxford Companion to Australian Gardens, Oxford University Press in association with the Australian Garden History Society, South Melbourne, 2002, pp.142, 153, 318, 364-65, 598. 2003 Suzanne Hunt & Anne Coleman, ‘Turkeith and Mooleric, Birregurra’, Australian Garden History, 15 (2), Sept/Oct 2003, pp.9-20; also separately published by the Australian Garden History Society (Victorian Branch). 2004 Nina Crone, ‘Speaking with Suzanne Hunt [interview]’, Australian Garden History, 16 (2), Sept/Oct 2004,pp.l8-19. ‘Preface’, in Richard Aitken, Gardenesque: a celebration of Australian ^ardenin^. The Miegunyah Press in association with the State Library of Victoria, Carlton, Vic., 2004, pp.ix-x. 2005 ‘The Unusual Life of Edna Walling [book review]’, Australian Garden History, 17 (2), Sept/Oct 2005, p.24. ‘Town & Country: portraits of colonial homes and gardens [exhibition review]’, Australian Garden History, 17 (3), Nov/Dec 2005/Jan 2006, pp.17-18. Australian Garden History V0I.19 N0.5 May/June 2008 For the bookshelf Landscape Gardening in Australia: Thomas Shepherd, Mulini Press, Canberra, 2006 (ISBN 0 949 91098 8): paperback RRP $40 (available from Mulini Press, PO Box 82, Jamison Centre, ACT, 2614), Daniel Bunce, Manual of Practical Gardening, (Hobart Town, 1 838), facsimile edition. Friends of Geelong Botanic Gardens Inc., Geelong, 2007 (ISBN 978 0 646 47975 0): paperback RRP $27.95 (available from Friends of Geelong Botanic Gardens, PO Box 235, Geelong,Vic., 3220, plus $3.45 postage). The 1830s were an important turning point in the history of colonial Australia. The first British settlers had arrived at the Swan River in Western Australia in 1829, a fledgling setdement was established at Port Phillip (later Melbourne) in 1834-35, and the South Australia Company was formed in 1836 with the colony’s first migrants arriving in the same year. New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania) had by this date become sufficiendy established for colonists to turn their attendon from utilitarian to ornamental gardening. Publicadons specifically written for local gardeners and property owners appeared in Sydney and Hobart to accommodate this new enthusiasm. When assessed in an international context and given the modest size of the respecdve audiences, this was remarkable. Thomas Shepherd’s Lectures on Landscape Gardeninpf in Australia was posthumously published in 1836. Shepherd translated the principles he had learned as a landscape gardener and the writings of Repton and Loudon for his new antipodean environment. The final, seventh lecture in the series, which focused on particular properties around Sydney Harbour, has been reproduced and quoted in several twentieth- century publications. Shepherd also endeavoured to educate his Sydney audience in the value of retaining mature indigenous trees as well as in the opportunities that the pastoral nature of New South Wales presented to owners and gardeners. Shepherd’s set of lectures has hitherto only been available to readers in select libraries and research collections. Victor Crittenden’s Mulini Press reprint of Shepherd’s Lectures complements his 1992 biography of Thomas Shepherd and is a useful and informative addition to the bookshelves of all interested in Australia’s environmental history. Daniel Bunce’s A Manual of Practical Gardening adapted to the Climate of Van Diemen’s Land was initially issued in monthly parts, commencing Australian Garden History V0I.19 N0.5 May/June 2008 in July 1837. When completed in 1838, it was bound and offered for sale. Like Shepherd, Bunce adapted his knowledge to his adopted land and mixed advice on exotic plants with his observations on growing local flora. April, Bunce concluded, was a good season to venture into the hills about Hobart to select and transplant good bushy plants of Dodonaea to make edgings for the borders of gardens in the developing town. 1 vividly recall hours spent transcribing sections of Bunce’s Manual by hand, the library volume too fragile to be copied. Garden history enthusiasts have now been spared that task. Friends of Geelong Botanic Gardens reprinted the Manual in 2007 to mark the 150th anniversary of Bunce’s appointment as curator of that garden. The reprinting of these two early works is commended. Both reprints have been economically printed as paperbacks. The Bunce reprint emulates the original dark green binding and size of the original whereas the Shepherd sports a canary yellow cover and is in the larger format preferred by Mulini Press. 1 look forward to a day when Australian garden historians clamour for handsomely printed and finely bound facsimiles but until then, enjoy a most instructive read. Colleen Morris Pauline Payne, The Diplomatic Gardener: Richard Schomburgk, explorer and botanic garden director, Jeffcott Press, North Adelaide, 2007 (ISBN 978 0 646485 287): hardback RRP $80; paperback RRP $50 (available from the publisher, ph 08 8361 804 0: plus $10 postage) The first striking thing about this book is its cover, which depicts a giant waterlily ( Victoria amazonica) framed by two Indians in exotic dress and brandishing weapons. This might seem an odd way to begin the biography of a man who is most well- known in Australia as the second director of the Adelaide Botanic Garden, but it immediately signals that Richard Schomburgk had another famous and exciting life before this appointment in 1865. Despite his adventures in the tropics, Schomburgk has not been well- served by biographers. There is no other full-scale treatment of his life, and only a smattering of articles. The internet yields more hits for his older brother Robert, leader of the water-lily expedition to British Guiana. In part this is because few of Richard’s personal papers survive, although there is a mass of published documents. 17 Utility and ornament were combined at Adelaide Botanic Garden under the directorship of Richard Schomburgk (as Pauline Payne relates in her new biography), medicinal plants rubbing shoulders with showy favourites such as orchids. [Images courtesy Botanic Gardens of Adelaide] Pauline Payne is the ideal candidate to take up the challenge of crafting a book out of this imperfect material. She devoted her PhD to Schomburgk, and has an extensive knowledge of science history in South Australia where she works as a professional historian. She is also Schomburgk’s great-granddaughter and was named after his wife, which gave her access to family memorabilia illustrated throughout the book. The Diplomatic Gardener is divided into 8 chapters, half dealing with Schomburgk’s life before Australia. Payne’s aim is to make this biography as widely accessible as possible and this she achieves through the combination of stylish prose and a lavish use of illustrations. She also provides notes on sources and a bibliography for readers who want to know even more. Richard Schomburgk was born in Germany into what became a high achieving family of brothers. Their father assigned each to a different trade, with Richard’s being gardening. It was during his years as an apprentice that he learnt his first lessons in the diplomacy — referred to in the title of the book — a manner that was to distinguish his career (in this case how to please a client). In the early 1840s Richard accompanied his brother Robert on an expedition to British Guiana exposing him to all the danger and novelty a young man could reasonably wish and to more lessons in diplomacy (this time in relation to border negotiations). The book Richard published about this expedition made him famous in Europe, although it was not translated into English until 1922. After an uncharacteristically incautious involvement in political unrest in Germany, Richard and his brothers Otto and Julius emigrated to South Australia. Eor over 20 years Richard lived relatively quietly as a farmer near Gawler but in 1865, aged 54, he was appointed director of the Adelaide Botanic Garden and joined the Establishment. He remained director until his death in 1891, and under his care the Garden became a much loved and praised public institution. Here most of all he earned the epithet ‘diplomatic’ as, unlike his compatriot Mueller in Melbourne, he successfully juggled the competing economic, aesthetic, and scientific expectations of colonists for a botanic garden. Readers cannot help but be fascinated by the story of Schomburgk’s transformation from gardening apprentice to botanic garden director. i8 Australian Garden History V0I.19 N0.5 May/June 2008 Those familiar with the Adelaide Botanic Garden will also be surprised to learn how much the current layout owes to him; including the Victoria House (built to house V. amazonica)^ and the Economic Botany Museum. To those who are not so familiar, this book will surely serve as an inducement to travel to Adelaide. Sara Maroske Honorary Associate Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne Lesley Head & Pat Muir, Backyard: nature and culture in suburban Australia, University of Wollongong Press, Wollongong, 2007 (ISBN 978 I 920831 51 6): hardback RRP $69.95 Most Australians have a backyard of some kind. This means that they must respond to the plants which grow by design or otherwise in the place they occupy, and to the wildlife which shares that occupation. To occupy an area of land is to be in a relationship of some kind with the realm of nature. It may not be necessary to garden, but the land must be managed if it is not to become overgrown with the wildlings that nature will provide. The backyards of Australian cities are a significant part of the environment. It is in their backyards that many Australians engage with the environment. What does a study of this engagement reveal.^ The authors, from the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Wollongong, conducted a detailed survey of a range of backyards and gardens, principally in Sydney and Wollongong, visiting some 265 backyards and interviewing some 330 occupants to discover what they thought about many of the big environmental issues of our time (for example, water consumption, sustainable land use, biodiversity conservation, invasive plants) as expressed in their backyards. Eurther diversity of ecological experience was provided by including a small number of backyards (24) in Alice Springs in the survey. As this book demonstrates there is a wide range of responses among different members of the communities surveyed. A litmus test is the value accorded to exotic plants. While acknowledging ambiguities and contradictions within and between groups, the authors divided the participants into four groups: committed ‘native gardeners’ (the purists), ‘general native gardeners’ (the pragmatists who choose to plant both Australian plants and exotics), ‘non-native Australian Garden History V0I.19 N0.5 May/June 2008 gardeners’ (who prefer exotic plants for various reasons), and ‘non-gardeners’. The study reinforces the inadequacy of theories which separate humans from nature, or which seek to give primacy to the indigenous over the exotic, or regard any human alteration of the natural as environmental degradation. The examples discussed in the book demonstrate that the human modified environments in which we live contain much of value; and that there may be a positive ecological role even for invasive plants such as Lantana camera E. and Pittosporum undulatum Vent. The questions about nature and the environment considered in this book are important, and there are many valuable insights. Whatever doubts may remain as to whether a consideration of the views of a range of middle Australians about such issues is the best way to conduct an analysis of such questions, the approach is engaging. All in all, the book provides the reader with much food for thought, and stimulates the appetite to consider how we should live in the Australian environment. The images used have very much the feel of snapshots from a family album. Perhaps this was intended to reinforce the participation in the project by the ordinary people given a voice in the work: the occupants of the backyards. But the technical quality of the photographs is often poor, and the appearance of the book suffers as a result. John Dwyer Seep 0 Non-Hybrid 0 Open-Pollinated 0 Non-GMO 0 Free of Chemical Coatings * firing ing you the foods our forel^thers enjoyed " -c V- Contact us today for your FREE Mail Order Catalogue ph: 03 6239 9185 www.thelostseed.com.au Just released Myles Baldwin, Per/od Gardens: landscapes for houses with history, Murdoch Books, Sydney, 2008 (ISBN 978 I 740459 06 8): hardback RRP $79.95 A practical guide to the design and planting of gardens, from Renaissance to Modernist. Although aimed at an international market, Australian examples feature in the case studies — the Victorian and Arts and Crafts gardens will doubtless be of greater use than those of the Renaissance (although there may be some aspiring antipodean merchant princes and princesses who might linger over the earlier examples). Baldwin trained at the Royal Botanic Gardens Sydney while the images are by well- known Australian photographer Simon Griffiths. Harriet Edquist, Pioneers of Modernism: the Arts and Crafts movement in Australia, The Miegunyah Press, Carlton, Vic., 2008 (ISBN 978 0 522 85178 6): hardback RRP $59.95 One substantial chapter in this profusely illustrated survey of Australian Arts and Crafts architecture is devoted to ‘Garden Craft’, and this alone makes the book worthy of notice for AGHS members. House and garden (to say nothing of interiors and furnishings — also treated in a complementary chapter) were viewed by proponents of the Arts and Crafts movement as a unified pairing, and amid English and American influences Edquist finds local manifestations in the bush garden and even the roof garden. Eots of yummy stuff here. Andrea Inglis, Summer in the Hills: the nineteenth- century mountain resort in Australia, Australian Scholarly Publishing, Melbourne, 2008 (ISBN I 74097 127 2): paperback RRP $44 (available post free from ASP, PO Box 299,Kew,Vic.3IOI) Not strictly garden history, but plenty for those interested in the wider social and cultural context in which nineteenth-century garden making took place. Based on the author’s doctoral studies, successive chapters examine the aesthetic appeal of mountains, British India, health, the development of hill-station gardens, social life, and challenges from rival resorts. Inglis argues for a reassessment of the existing emphasis on exotic plants as the hill- station mainstay to a fresh perspective that instead focusses on the significant role played by the bush and indigenous plants. Terry Kass, Sails to Satellites: the Surveyors General of NSW (1 786-2007), NSW Department of Lands, Bathurst, NSW, 2008 (ISBN 978 0 975235 45 4): paperback RRP $44.95 (available from the publisher, PO Box 1 43, Bathurst, NSW, 2795: postage $ I 1 .50) This authoritative overview of the history of surveying in New South Wales (as seen through the biographical prism of successive surveyors general) contains much of interest to the garden historian. Surveyors were amongst the earliest professionals to influence Australia’s designed landscape, and key individuals such as Thomas Mitchell were especially prominent in this regard. The change in recent decades towards photographic and then digital capture of information provides a foil to any thought that it was only the colonial period that witnessed heroic deeds. Judyth A. McLeod, In a Unicorn's Garden: recreating the magic and mystery of medieval gardens, Murdoch Books, Sydney 2008 (ISBN 978 I 921208 57 7): hardback RRP $39.95 Well-known Australian author takes a wide-ranging historical look at medieval gardens and the plants they contained. Unsurprisingly, herbs feature prominently in this illustrated guide. John Mulvaney,T/ie axe had never sounded': place, people and heritage of Recherche BayTasmania, ANU E Press and Aboriginal History Incorporated, Canberra, 2007 (ISBN 978 I 921 3 1 3 20 2): paperback This monograph summarises the history of Recherche Bay, a key site of early contact between Erench explorers and Indigenous Tasmanians. John Mulvaney — one of Australia’s foremost historians — ^writes with a deep and sympathetic understanding of this rich history and also of management issues surrounding its future conservation (issues keenly monitored by the AGHS). Michael Simpson & Kyleigh Simpson, The Shambles: the story of a Montville garden,The authors, Montville, Qld, 2007: hardback RRP $50 (available from 85 Western Avenue, Montville, Queensland, 4560: $9.30 postage for interstate orders) Monographs on Australian gardens are rare so this self-published volume is a welcome addition to the genre. Montville’s elevated location in south- east Queensland allows a broad range of plants to be grown and the authors share their practical experience gleaned during a decade-and-a-half’s development of the garden. Australian Garden History V0I.19 N0.5 May/June 2008 Jottanda Annual national conference The Southern Highlands branch is hosting this year’s annual national conference which will be based in Bowral with visits to gardens in the Southern Highlands and Illawarra regions. The theme of the conference in ‘From Wilderness to Pleasure Ground’ and registration brochures are included as an insert to this issue of the journal. Book early as this conference is bound to be popular. The conference runs from 10-12 October 2008 with optional garden visits on 13 October (see story page 23). Links: www.gardenhistorysociety.org.au NMC planning day As a prelude to its last meeting, the National Management Committee held one of its regular planning days to discuss issues affecting the broad direction of the Society. High on the agenda were the journal and its future direction, AGHS tours, oral histories of AGHS founding members, promotion and publicity, conference guidelines, and the Society’s status in regard to tax deductibility. National Management Committee pictured at the recent planning day in Melbourne. AGH goes e- The National Management Committee resolved at their last meeting to license Australian Garden History with EBSCO Publishing, one of the world’s largest suppliers of full-text and bibliographic databases to libraries. Individual articles from our journal will now be available to EBSCO subscribers in the form of electronic downloads (accessed in a manner similar to other e-journals and e-books). Subscriptions are held by most major public and academic libraries. The Society receives royalties for each download but more importantly such electronic access greatly enhances our exposure to a national and international audience. The service also reinforces our role of facilitating the systematic identifying, recording and restoration of gardens. It may take some months for our first content to go on-line, but in the meantime readers may like to view the EBSCO home page to see a list of other journals available. Links: www.ebscohost.com Diary dates MAY 2008 Sunday i8 Queensland Roma Street Parkland Tour: Guided tour by curator Bob Dobbs followed by a talk on the history of the Parkland site. Meet at 10 am at the Melange Caf for morning tea (for parkland map see: www.romastreetparkland. com/), BYO lunch. Cost: members $10, guests $15 (morning tea included). Register by 11 May to Gill Jorgensen (07) 3341 3933 or j orgenkg@picknowl . com . au Sunday i8 Sydney & Northern NSW Burwood/Appian Way walking tour: Get to know Burwood’s finest streets (upper Burwood Road and the Appian Way, originally part of the Hoskins Estate) while enjoying fine Victorian and Federation houses in large grounds and garden suburb living undergoing renewal. 2^ pm (meeting place to be advised). Cost: $10 members, $15 guests, bookings essential to Stuart Read on (02) 9873 8554 (bh) or stuart.read@heritage.nsw.gov.au Saturday 24 Tasmania Tasmanian Herbarium: Illustrated talk by Dr Gintaras Kantvilas on the Herbarium and its collection. 2 pm, Hodgkin Hall, Friends School, Hobart. Cost: $15 members, $18 guests (includes afternoon tea). Bookings essential to Rex Bean by 19 May on (03) 62604418 or rex. bean@bigpond . com Sunday 25 South Australia West Terrace Cemetery: Guided tour of this historic cemetery (1837) by one of the Friends of the West Terrace Cemetery. Native plants are being allowed to naturalise throughout the cemetery and are included in a plant list. Meet at front gate, 2 pm, West Terrace, Adelaide (parking available inside), duration: IV 2 hours (50 people maximum). Donation: $5 per person for cemetery entrance fee. RSVP by 16 May to Fyn Hfiller on (08) 8333 1329. Australian Garden History V0I.19 N0.5 May/June 2008 21 Diary dates JUNE 2008 Saturday 7 to Monday 9 Queensland Gympie/Cooroy/Noosa: Queen’s Birthday Weekend visit to view the redeveloped zigzag garden in Calton Hill Park plus the new memorial to miners at Gympie, Noosa Botanic Gardens (near Cooroy), Michael Chapman garden (Australian songwriter — ^property established by tennis player Thomas Muster) on the heights at Tinbeerwah, historic Majestic Theatre at Pomona for dinner, and a silent movie show with piano accompaniment. Meet at noon in Memorial Park, Reef Street, Gympie. Book motel ASAP with Adelene Walker on (07) 5482 3232 or jimwalk@internode.on.net and register by 31 May with Gill Jorgensen on (07) 3341 3933 or jorgenkg@picknowl.com.au Wednesday 11 ACT /Monaro /Riverina Cultural Landscapes of Asia: hidden gems: Lecture by Ken Taylor held in conjunction with the Friends of the National Library of Australia. Venue: Conference Room, National Library of Australia, 6pm. Contact: FNLA office (02) 6262 1698 or friends@nla.gov.au Thursday 12 Sydney & Northern NSW The Australian Backyard: past and future: Talk by Judy Horton (Yates Seeds) highlighting changes to our back yards over time, using Yates’ records since 1887 and predicting trends with shrinking land and rising population density. 6.30 for 7 pm, Annie Wyatt Room, National Trust Centre, Observatory Hill. Cost: $10 members, $15 guests, bookings essential to Stuart Read on (02) 9873 8554 (bh) or stuar t . r e ad@heritage . nsw. gov. au Sunday 22 South Australia The Pleasures of Gardens through the Eyes of Artists: An Art Gallery of South Australia guide will lead our group on a tour of garden-orientated art from this outstandmg collection. Meet in foyer adjoining bookshop at rear of Art Gallery of South Australia, 2:30 pm (duration: 1 hour). Please indicate if you wish to have afternoon tea at the Gallery restaurant afterwards. Donation: $2 per person Gallery fee. RSVP by 16 June to Lyn Hillier on (08) 8333 1329. Tuesday 24 Victoria The Garden of Ideas: For our first winter lecture, Richard Aitken will explore the early colonial garden as a source of ideas and innovation about matters of design. 6 for 6.30pm, Mueller HaU, Herbarium, Birdwood Avenue, South Yarra. Cost: $15 members, $20 guests, $5 students. Contact Helen Botham on (03)9583 1114 or jhbotham@bigpond.net.au Saturday 28 to Sunday 29 Sydney & Northern NSW Ashfield walking tour: Wander the heart of Victorian and Edwardian Ashfield noting its wide range of housing (including modern flats), pocket parks, and tree avenues. 10 am - 1 pm (meeting place to be advised). Cost: $10 members, $15 guests, bookings essential to Stuart Read on (02) 9873 8554 (bh) or stuart.read@heritage.nsw.gov.au JULY 2008 Thursday 17 Victoria Regional Botanic Gardens Project: For our second winter lecture, Roger Cousens will discuss his work with a wide variety of groups to identify and make widely available information about these historic Victorian gardens. 6 for 6.30pm, Mueller HaU, Herbarium, Birdwood Avenue, South Yarra. Cost: $15 members, $20 guests, $5 students. Contact Anne Vale on (03) 9526 2041 or heriscapes@hotkey.net.au Sunday 22 Sydney Pyrmont: Walking tour with John Challis exploring harbour- front Pyrmont, once a gentry estate, then workers’ housing and now high rise apartments with waterfront parks and heritage interpretation. Date TBC (may be 3 August). 10 am - 1 pm (meeting place to be advised). Cost: $10 members, $15 guests, bookings essential to Stuart Read on (02) 9873 8554 (bh) or stuart.read@heritage.nsw.gov.au Sunday 27 Western Australia Annual General Meeting: Afternoon function at which the John Viska Essay Prize will be launched. Time and venue to be advised. Contact: Sue Monger on (08) 9384 1575 or susanmonger@yahoo . com. au AUGUST 2008 Wednesday 6 Sydney Landscape Architecture 1950s+: TaUc by Matthew Taylor and short AGM. 6-8pm, Annie Wyatt Room, National Trust Centre, Observatory H il l. Cost for taUc: $10 members, $15 guests, bookings to Stuart Read, (02)9873 8554. Saturday i6 Sydney Sydney’s lost city gardens: Walk from the Museum of Sydney taking in Macquarie Place, the western Domain, and Hyde Park, in conjunction with the ‘Lost Gardens of Sydney’ exhibition. 2-3pm, Museum of Sydney, bookings to Stuart Read on (02) 9873 8554. OCTOBER 2008 Friday lo to Sunday 12 (optional day Monday 13) Southern Highlands From Wilderness to Pleasure Ground: AGHS Annual National Conference: To be held in Bowral, New South Wales (registration brochures are included as an insert to this issue of the journal). 22 Australian Garden History V0I.19 N0.5 May/June 2008 From wilderness to pleasure ground: discovering the garden and horticultural history of the Southern Highlands Chris Webb The Society’s forthcoming annual national conference, to be held from 10-12 October 2008, is to be hosted by the Southern Highlands branch — this brief overview sets the scene. Book early! In 1820 Governor Macquarie visited Dr Charles Throsby of Throsby Park, Moss Vale, and described the area as ‘p^i*ticularly beautiful and rich, resembling a fine extensive pleasure ground in England’. As early as 1820 large land grants were being made and substantial residences built. James Atkinson, the former principal clerk to the Colonial Secretary’s office, was given 2000 acres at Sutton Forest which he called Oldbury and in 1828 built a fine sandstone house with a garden of simple layout which still exists today. Further large grants were made and substantial residences were built such as Newbury for Captain John Nicholson and Throsby Park for Charles Throsby. The first settlement in the Southern Highlands was at Bong Bong, just to the north of Moss Vale. Bong Bong, however, was short lived when the new Great South Road was moved to the west through Berrima. The coming of the railway in 1867 brought the centre of development in the Southern Highlands back to Moss Vale and Bowral, leaving Berrima to sleep for the next 100 years. Fuckily this has allowed Berrima to be preserved as a largely intact colonial village. Once the railway arrived tourists began flocking to the area and it soon became the fashionable place for the wealthy to build their summer retreats. Numerous fine country estates began development and this was spurred on by the acquisition of Hillview at Sutton Forest as the New South Wales Governors’ country residence. Plant nurseries became more prevalent as did market gardens and intensive agriculture. Searle Brothers, Located in a quiet corner of the vast Milton Park garden is this picturesque waterfall and pond. Australian Garden History V0I.19 N0.5 May/June 2008 23 Photo: Charlotte Webb The view from Throsby Park towards Mt Gibraltar and Oxley Hill is typical of the natural scenic beauty of the Southern Highlands. Arthur Yates, Fergusons, and Claude Crowe established nurseries which soon provided seeds and plants both locally and for the Sydney market. There are several distinct periods of garden and horticultural development in the Southern Highlands. The late Victorian period was dominated by new residents seizing the opportunity to create their own piece of the ‘old country’ with the establishment of many gardens and estates with collections of exotics to create the atmosphere of the English countryside. The prominent gardens of this time included Summerlees at Sutton Forest, a fine Italianate Victorian house, with a large carriage loop and extensive tree plantings built for Henry Badgery in 1875. Retford Park, one of the grandest mansions of this time was built for retailer Samuel Hordern I. A huge two-storey house it possessed a tower and iron lace-embellished verandas on both stories with an extensive park-like garden. Other significant gardens of this time were Hopewood in Bowral, Austermere (SCEGGS) at Moss Vale, and the Rift in Bowral. The federation period until World War One saw the creation of another great Hordern garden Milton Park. Anthony Hordern purchased the land in 1910 and proceeded to build a large house described as being in the ‘economical villa style’. The garden close to the house was laid out in a very typical geometric Edwardian style with large pine windbreaks to the west and south. Anthony’s Hordern’s second wife Mary undertook to redesign the garden in the 1930s and removed all the geometric garden beds and remodelled the front lawn into a series of gentle terraces. Milton Park is one of the few gardens in Australia to be internationally recognised as significant. The inter- war period was also a period of great development with significant gardens such as Sir Cecil Hoskin’s Invergowrie, Exeter, established with the help of Paul Sorensen and Moidart built for the Burns family as a country estate in Bowral. The 1950s and 1960s also saw the development of many new gardens including Mere worth, Berrima, and Kennerton Green, established by Sir Jock and Lady Pagan. Kennerton Green set a new benchmark for gardens in the Southern Highlands. Its local heritage listing is fundamentally linked to its social significance. Since 1963 the garden at Kennerton Green has been opened to the public on a regular basis, including Bowral Tulip Time and, for the Australian Open Garden Scheme. Through promotion by the previous owner, Marilyn Abbott, in 2006 Kennerton Green was the first garden in the Southern Highlands to be zoned a Commercial Garden^ a new category created by the local Council to allow ongoing commercial use of a garden. Gardening and horticultural pursuits are still a passion for many residents of the Southern Highlands and gardens are being created at perhaps a rate greater than ever before. The challenges of a changing climate, reduced staff, and considerably less available gardening time are however perhaps changing the style to which we have become accustomed. AUSTRALIAN GARDEN HISTORY Mission Statement The Australian Garden History Society is the leader in concern for and conservation of significant cultural landscapes and historic gardens through committed, relevant and sustainable action. Phone: 03 9650 5043 ■ Tollfree: 1800 678 446 ■ www.gardenhistorysociety.org.au Photo: Charlotte Webb