Australian garden history : journal of the Australian Garden History Society

Australian

Vol. 24 No. 1

July/August/September 2012

HISTORY

Vi

landscapes . ,
Guilfoyle centenary
Marginalia arnplified

...

JOURNAL OFTHE AUSTRALIAN GARDEN HISTORY SOCIETY

Cover: As Australia was metamorphosing
during the 1 820s and 1 830s into a
settler society British gardening writer
J.C. Loudon was proclaiming his message
with almost religious fervor ‘It is much
to be wished, that large public gardens,
combining, as far as practicable, every
branch of the art, were established
near all our principal towns, as places of
public resort, recreation, and instruction.'
This desirability of public parks and
gardens was a message heeded by
colonists and their legislatures alike
(demonstrated here by Melbourne
Botanic Gardens in 1 875 — see article
on page 6) but eternal vigilance is now
needed to safeguard this heritage.

Detail from plan acconnpanying William
Gullfoyle's 1875 annual report on the
Melbourne Botanic Gardens (private
collection)

Right: Sweeps of silver-grey and
mauve amongst the granite boulders
and eucalypts atWillawa, Moonbah,
photographed on the AGHS autumn
tour of the Monaro. (See pages 30-3 1
for tour report.)
Photo: Howard Tanner

AUSTRALIAN

GARDEN

HISTOBY

SOCIETY

Patron

Sue Ebury - Countess ofWilton

Executive Officer

Phoebe LaGerche-Wijsnnan

Publication

Australian Garden History, the
official journal of the Australian
Garden History Society,
is published quarterly

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Richard Aitken

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Victoria, 3 1 23

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CONVENOR
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MEMBERS
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NATIONAL MANAGEMENT

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John Taylor (Vice Chairman)
Lynne Walker (Secretary)
Kathy Wright (Treasurer)

Elected Members

Ray Choate
John Dwyer
Trisha Burkitt
Stuart Read
Jan Schapper
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Lynne Walker
Kathy Wright

State Representatives

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NSW Laurel Cheetham
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BRANCH CONTACTS

ACT /Monaro/Riverina

Dr Louise Moran
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Curtin ACT 2605
Phone: (02) 628 I 2493

Queensland

John Taylor
I I joynt St
Hamilton QLD 4007
Phone: 07 3862 4284
jht@hotkey.net.au

COMMITTEE
South Australia

Ray Choate
Barr Smith Library
University of Adelaide
Adelaide SA 5005
Phone: 08 8303 4064
ray.choate@adelaide.edu.au

Southern Highlands

Laurel Cheetham
28 Charlotte Street
Burradoo NSW 2576
Phone: 02 486 1 7132
l.cheetham@bigpond.com

Sydney & Northern NSW

Stuart Read

Phone: 02 9326 9468

Stuart 1 962@bigpond.com

Tasmania

Elizabeth Kerry

PO Box 89, Richmond TAS 7025
Phone: (03) 6260 4216
liz.kerry@keypoint.com.au

Victoria

Dr Anne Vale

PO Box 7, Koonwarra VIC 3954
Phone: 03 5664 3104
heriscapes@optusnet.com.au

Western Australia

Caroline Grant
9 A Grange Street
Claremont WA 60 1 0
chhgrant@yahoo.com

Disclaimer

The views expressed in this journal are those of the contributors and
are not necessarily shared by the Australian Garden History Society.

2

Australian Garden History, 24 (1), July/August/September 2012

From the chair

Contents

John Dwyer

Before Victoria:
William Guilfoyle in
New South Wales
STUART READ
4

This issue of our journal celebrates the centenary of William Guilfoyle’s
death, with leading articles about aspects of the life and work of this master of
landscape. The conservation of Guilfoyle’s renowned Royal Botanic Gardens
Melbourne was considered at the successful seminar conducted recently by the
Victorian Branch of the Society, at which landscape architect Andrew Laidlaw
explained how he has sought to maintain Guilfoyle’s vision in dealing with the
changes that have inevitably occurred in a garden designed and constructed
more than a century ago.

The significant cultural landscapes of Australia extend, of course, beyond
those created by Guilfoyle and the Australian Garden History Society is a
leader in concern for their conservation. We have been actively involved in
the conservation of historic public parks, gardens, and designed landscapes
ranging from the Avenue of Honour at Bacchus Marsh to the Walter Burley
Griffin designed vista from Parliament House to the Australian War Memorial
at Canberra. Advocacy by the Society has played a part in achieving successful
outcomes in these and other cases.

But there are constant threats to significant public landscapes and trees from
development proposals, and eternal vigilance is needed to safeguard our
heritage.

Threats come not only from development. Exotic trees are key components
of our significant landscapes in public gardens and street planting, as well as
the countryside. Many are now under threat. In part the pressure is based on a
widespread belief that introduced plants do not belong here and native plants
should be preferred. Many introduced trees, such as willows, are now said to
be weeds, and are being removed from urban and rural landscapes regardless of
their cultural significance.

Accepting that change over time is inevitable, the challenges to the conservation
of landscapes presented by change vary. The recent ten-year drought in many
parts of Australia brought home the reality of tree senescence and death. Many
factors in addition to drought give rise to challenges to conservation. They
include development and infrastructure proposals, as well as environmental
factors such as changing weather patterns as part of climate change. The
forthcoming issue (Volume 3) of Studies in Australian Garden History has as its
theme ‘Managing change in historic landscapes’. As individual gardeners and
collectively as a Society, there are many conservation challenges ahead.

In the margins: William
Guilfoyle in conversation
with Ferdinand von Mueller
JANET HEYWOOD
6

Conserving Bendigo's
legacy of significant parks
and gardens
TIM BUYKX
10

'Get Guilfoyle': a
re-discovered landscape
by one of Australia's great
landscape designers
LEE ANDREWS
13

The great hedge at Buda
DIANNE THOMSON
18

A voice in the wilderness:
Gwenda Sheridan, cultural
landscape crusader

MANDY STROEBEL
21

For the bookshelf

25

Recent releases

26

Dialogue

27

AGHS News

28

Monaro gardens:

AGHS Autumn Tour,

23-27 April 2012

HOWARD TANNER
30

Profile: Laurel Cheetham

32

Diary dates

33

'Capturing Flora: 300 years
of Australian botanical
art' at the Art Gallery of
Ballarat'

GORDON MORRISON
35

Australian Garden History, 24 (1), July/ August/September 2012

3

Stuart Read

Before Victoria : William
Guilfoyle in New South Wales

Albury Botanic
Gardens is one of
many New South
Wales gardens where
input from William
Guilfoyle is part of
their design history
evidence of the
far-reaching influence
of this prolific designer
Photo: Richard Aitken

The work of William Guyilfoyle
(1840-1912) from the early 1870s,
especially redesigning Melbourne Botanic
Garden, is justifiably celebrated, but skills
and experience gained during his early
life in New South Wales were vital to his
successful career.

The first 33 years brought influences used all
William Guilfoyle’s life. His father Michael helped
lay out entrepreneur T.S. Mort’s Greenoaks,
Darling Point: ‘finest in the colony’. Mort
leased land to Guilfoyle Senior on which he
established in 1851 his ‘Exotic Nursery’. The
house still stands on the corner of Scott and Ocean
Streets. Remnant figs, black bean, araucarias,
and jacarandas (Guilfoyle Snr perfected their
propagation) pepper Ocean Street today.
Overthorpe, Sir William Hay’s ‘botanic garden’
is nearby: its microclimate allows huge rainforest
trees, palms, and ferns — familiar to William.

Michael Guilfoyle is attributed (by William,
talking to J.H. Maiden) with ‘scores’ of Sydney

gardens. One is Ginnahgulla, Bellevue Hill (John
Fairfax’s home). Elements survive: stone works,
fountain, Norfolk Island, Cook, and Hoop Pine,
Kauri, Moreton Bay and Port Jackson figs. One
source attributes to him Clarens, Potts Point,
although this may have been jacaranda supply
only. Michael was involved with Argyle Place,
and supplied 1870 plantings for and was on the
Horticultural Society committee managing the
layout of Prince Alfred Park.

William Guilfoyle was schooled privately by his
Huguenot uncle Eouis Delafosse, botanist Rev.
William Woolls, plant hunter John McGillivray,
scientist William Sharp Macleay, and at St Mary’s
College at Eyndhurst. This property, formerly
James Bowman’s estate, enjoyed renowned
parkland, possibly designed by nurseryman,
Thomas Shepherd (who was familiar with J.C.
Eoudon’s writings). Eoudon’s books were held
locally and all these may have influenced William.

In 1868 Guilfoyle was aboard HMS Challenger
collecting in the South Pacific armed with a dozen
Wardian cases from Charles Moore, director of

4

Australian Garden History, 24 (1), July/August/September 2012

Sydney Botanic Gardens. On his return Moore
took six, giving the rest to Michael Guilfoyle,
leading to introductions of crotons, coral trees,
hibiscus, Auranticarpa (syn. Pittosporum)
rhombifolium, frangipani, breadfruit, and Cordyline
fruticosa (syn. Dracaena guilfoylei). Guilfoyle
published ‘A botanical tour amongst South Sea
Islands’ in the Sydney Mail in 1868 describing
a trip which opened his eyes to tropical plants,
variegated foliage, and strong colour contrasts: all
ongoing influences.

Moore’s collecting (South Pacific, NSW, and
Queensland rainforests) led to Sydney Botanic
Gardens’ palm grove (1862) and outstanding
subtropical collections. He also extended the lower
gardens into F arm Cove for strolling on curving
paths. All his life Guilfoyle spoke admiringly
of these gardens. Moore also helped landscape
Rookwood Necropolis (1868), popular for outings:
including visits by Guilfoyle perhaps ?

From Melbourne, Ferdinand Mueller tried to
coax Guilfoyle to explore Papua New Guinea. He
wrote, sometimes weekly. In 1869 William went
to Cudgen in the Tweed to run his father’s nursery
and experimental garden. And find plants in
Scenic Rim and Mount Warning rainforests dense
with trees, especially figs (‘Fantastic monster of
the forest ... covered in orchids’), climbers, and
ferns, including staghorns (later used as column
capitals in Melbourne Botanic Gardens’ Temple
of the Winds). Melbourne’s Australian Border and
Fern Gully were echoes of the Tweed.

From the 1860s, Sydney held intercolonial
exhibitions in Prince Alfred Park including
horticultural products. The 1879 International
Exhibition in Sydney’s Domain (with surrounds
landscaped by Moore) was popular, and may have
influenced Guilfoyle.

Albury Botanic Garden (established 1877) took
advice from Guilfoyle in 1886, no doubt assisting
in softening its Union Jack paths into today’s
sinuous paths, sweeps of lawn, and rainforest plant
collection. He also designed the Principal’s garden
at Hawkesbury Agricultural College on an 1894
visit: its impressive drive, shrubbery, and fairy
circle — planted by others — may owe allegiance.

Stoneville station, Gundaroo (now Bowylie’s
garden), is attributed to Guilfoyle, a friend of
owners, the Masseys. Much modified after 1904
and since 1995, its pines, elms, and basic layout
may be the few Guilfoylean components left.
Guilfoyle is also attributed with a 1904 revamp of
the 1850s Yabtree station, Nangus (near Wagga)
for the Horsleys. Its long drive of elms and white

poplars leads through parkland to a spacious
garden with simple layout and features typical of
his work — Horsley family history attributes its
design to him.

In all, these are tantilising glimpses, and much
research and evidence remains to be uncovered
in New South Wales of this prolific and talented
designer.

Thick sub-tropical
vegetation on Mount
Warning, on the
northern coast of New
South Wales, a key
early environmental and
aesthetic influence on the
young William Guilfoyle
when stationed at the
family’s Tweed River
settlement during the
early 1870s.

Photo Richard Aitken

Stuart Read presented this paper to the recent AGHS
William Guilfoyle seminar and extends special thanks
to Elisha Long (Lyndhurst), David Sheedy (Ginahgulla),
Trisha Burkitt (Yabtree), and Peter Lister (Hawkesbury
Agricultural Gollege) for information about these
properties. A detailed bibliography is available on
request from the author stuartl962@bigpond.com

Australian Garden History, 24 (1), July/ August/September 2012

5

V

/A

tty

Janet Heywood

In the margins:

William Guilfoyle in conversation
with Ferdinand von A/Lueller

Guilfoyle’s landscaping
of Melbourne Botanic
Gardens combined
plants, buildings, and
other embellishments
to create his
preferred mode of
picturesque or 'scenic'
gardening, handling
diverse elements in
a controlled manner
that his predecessor
Mueller had never quite
mastered.

Private collection

In the marginal annotations of a pamphlet
written by Ferdinand von Mueller, we can
discern William Guilfoyle's unguarded
thoughts on the design of botanic gardens
combining ornament and instruction.

'Avoid extremes'

‘Avoid extremes’ — or so the title page motto
warned the reader, A message clearly not lost on
William Robert Guilfoyle, whose close reading
of ‘The objects of a botanic garden in relation
to industries’ remains today in the margins of
his copy held in the library of the Royal Botanic
Gardens Sydney. The text of a lecture delivered
by Ferdinand von Mueller, then Government
Botanist and Director of Melbourne Botanic
Gardens, at the Industrial and Technological
Museum, November 1871, this pamphlet was a
lengthy exposition on ‘true’ botanic gardens and
‘how far their legitimate functions are generally
recognised at the present day’.

At the time of this lecture William Guilfoyle was
living in the Tweed River valley in northern New
South Wales on the family sugar plantation and
sub-tropical nursery. Already an accomplished
plant collector and landscape designer in Sydney,
he had been recruited by Mueller in 1867 to
provide plant specimens for Melbourne Botanic
Gardens. And throughout the intervening years
they had maintained a steady correspondence and
botanical exchange.

But events in 1873 were to be a watershed not
only for the Melbourne Botanic Gardens but
also in the lives of these two men. In January,
Mueller was finally removed as Director
(although he remained as Government Botanist
until his death in 1896). There followed several
months of government indecision as to a suitable
replacement. Sometime in June interviews were
conducted by government representatives in
Sydney and William Guilfoyle was one of the
candidates. He was successful and took up his
appointment as temporary curator in July and by

6

Australian Garden History, 24 (1), July/August/September 2012

V in

August had submitted his first report. Guilfoyle’s
confirmation as director came in 1875,
submitted an ambitious plan for redevelopment
(see cover illustration).

Linking 'Phytologic instruction' with
'the picturesque'

In reading Guilfoyle’s marginalia today how fresh
and alive it seems. Much more than thinking
aloud or heckling from the sidelines, he engages
directly — and critically — with Mueller’s belief
that botanic gardens should be the province of
botanical science and ‘phytologic instruction’.
Garden design was therefore driven by scientific
imperatives rather than aesthetics: classification of
plants and geographic distribution determined the
layout of Mueller’s Melbourne Gardens plan. In
Guilfoyle’s view, these two need not be competing
interests or ‘clash with the picturesque’.

His remark was prophetic.

William Guilfoyle has been characterised by
his biographers R.T.M. Pescott as ‘the master
of landscaping’ (1974) and Paul Fox as ‘the
colonial aesthete’ (2004). Once appointed to
Melbourne, he introduced a bold new scheme,
upending Mueller’s footprint in the process. He
eliminated a network of narrow pathways and
avenues, dismantled the pinetum, removed
indigenous and established trees by transplanting
some throughout the grounds, removed the zoo
and aviary, and corrected issues of drainage and
water supply. In their place, Guilfoyle introduced
broad sweeping pathways and walkways, created
extensive lawns, established a fern gully, and
further developed the lake as a central focal point.
He augmented plant species to include additional
tropical and sub-tropical plants and those noted
for their colour and bold foliage.

For William Guilfoyle the ‘picturesque’ was more
than a garden style. It was the guiding principal in
his landscape design. Guided by Charles Moore’s
design of Sydney Botanic Gardens and drawing on
vistas and landscapes seen during his travels in the
South Pacific islands and the Tweed hinterland
(as for instance, at Mount Warning), he aimed
to recreate their naturalistic equivalents in the
Melbourne Gardens. And expand and popularise
the botanical experience in the process.

'Why not combine all?'

William Guilfoyle’s comments are like a
conversation with someone he respects and takes
seriously. But whose shoes he may be about to fill !
In hazarding a date when these comments were
written it is plausible to think it was sometime

in 1873. Possibly as a rehearsal or preparation
for the job interview in Sydney. Or, perhaps
post interview, they provided a checklist for
the bureaucratic requirements of the top public
servant he was or about to become.

It seems unlikely they were written once his
appointment had been confirmed. He swiftly got
to work and within a month had submitted his first
report on the Gardens. Also, there is something
in his tone, an exuberance or excitement, which
anticipates a possibility of success. His commentary,
supplemented with scoring of selected text and
read more than once, documents his thoughts at a
critical and turbulent time for his future career and
friendship with Mueller.

This pamphlet was re-discovered recently
in a bound volume bearing the spine title
‘Technological Museum Lectures [by] F. von
Mueller etc.’ It had been accessioned into the
Library of the then Sydney Botanic Gardens
on 14 November 1908’, under the directorship
of Joseph Maiden, ten months before William
Guilfoyle retired. Several other works from his
book collection were accessioned at the same
time: those discovered to date are listed below,
some still with Guilfoyle’s customary binding
(half-bound black leather and marbled paper
boards) for the Melbourne Botanic Gardens.

Ferdinand von Mueller was a prolific
correspondent and author who frequently inscribed
his own works ‘regardfully yours’. Three of the
pamphlets in this collection have been inscribed
to William Guilfoyle, but not the Industrial and
Technological Museum lectures (which contained
Mueller’s ‘The objects of a botanic garden in
relation to industry’). Interestingly, they reveal
both the cooling of the friendship and information
not previously recognised.

The close friendship
between Melbourne
Botanic Gardens
director Ferdinand
von Mueller and his
young prot g William
Guilfoyle is revealed in
this warm inscription
from c. I 870-7 1 .

Library of the Royal Botanic
Gardens and Domain Trust,
Sydney

c. ,

2 ^

/y// / '//r f /// > ■?

z/v//'

ON' lUU

Australian Garden History, 24 (1), July/ August/September 2012

7

Books with a Guilfoyle provenance held by the library of the Royal Botanic Gardens and
Domain Trust, Sydney

The following books, now in the library of the Royal Botanic Gardens and Domain Trust, Sydney, were once in the library of
William Guilfoyle at Melbourne Botanic Gardens. The bulk of this group was accessioned by Director Joseph Maiden at Sydney
in 1908 and appears to have been consigned en b/oc. Although the largest surviving portion of Guilfoyle’s professional library
is, not surprisingly, still held by the Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne, this Sydney group provides a representative insight into
Guilfoyle’s interests: natural history, botany, sub-tropical plants, landscape design, and a special interest in New Zealand plants.

1771: [Thomas Whately], Observations
on Modern Gardening, illustrated by
descriptions, 3rd ed.,T. Payne, London,
1771.

1840: Mrs Loudon, Instructions in
Gardening for Ladies, John Murray,
London, 1840.

1 845: John Lindley, School botany; or
The rudiments of botanical science,
Bradbury & Evans, London, 1 845.

I860: Ghristopher Dressen The Rudiments
of botany. Structural and Physiological:
being an Introduction to the study of
the vegetable kingdom, and comprising
the advantages of a full glossary
of technical terms, James S. Virtue,
London, I860.

1 867: Joseph Dalton Hooken Handbook
of the New Zealand Flora: a systematic
description of the native plants of New
Zealand and the Ghatham, Kermadec’s,
Lord Auckland’s, Gampbell’s, and
Macquarie Islands, Reeve & Go.,
London, 1867.

I860s-80s: Ferdinand von Mueller; bound
collection of pamphlets including
Australian Vegetation (1 867), On
the Application of Phytology to the
Industrial Purposes of Life ( 1 870),

Forest Gulture In Its Relation to
Industrial Pursuits (1871), The Principal
Timber Trees Readily Eligible for
Victorian Industrial Gulture (1871), The
Objects of a botanic Garden in Relation
to Industries ( 1 872), and The Natural
Gapabllltles of the Golony of Victoria
(1875).

1870: Richard Taylor; /Vlooh and English
Dictionary, [George T Ghapman],
Auckland, n.d.[l870].

1871: David Thomson, Handy book of the
Flower-garden being practical directions
for the propagation, culture, and
arrangement of plants in fower-gardens
all the year round, 2nd ed., William
Blackwood and Sons, Edinburgh &
London, 1871.

1 872: James Boyd Davies; Robert

Brown & James Middleton (eds). The
Practical Naturalist's Guide, containing
instructions for collecting, preparing, and
preserving zoological specimens. New
and enlarged edition, Maclachlan &
Stewart, Edinburgh, 1 872.

I875:W.J. Browne, Elementary Science
Manuals, botany for Schools and
Science C/osses, William Mullan, Belfast,
1875.

1876: Robt. RWhitworth (comp.),
ballllere's Queensland Gazetteer and
Road Guide, containing the most recent
and accurate Information as to every
place In the colony, with map, F.F.
Bailliere, Brisbane, 1 876.

1 878: George Glenny Gardening for the
Million and Amateur’s and Gottager’s
Guide, New and Revised Edition, One
Hundred and Thirty-fifth Thousand,
Houlston and Sons, London, 1 878.

I878:W.R. Guilfoyle, First book. Australian
botany: specially designed for the use
of schools. Illustrated by the author, 5.
Mullen, Melbourne, 1878.

c. 1879: George Glenny, The Properties
of Flowers and Plants, being the
acknowledged standard of perfection,
originated and devised by George
Glenny, F.R.H.S., 5th ed., Houlston and
Sons, London, n.d. [by 1 879].

1 879: Robt. RWhitworth (comp.),

ballllere’s Victorian Gazetteer and Road
Guide, containing the most recent and
accurate information as to every place
in the colony, with map, F.F. Bailliere,
Melbourne, 1879.

1 880: William Ferguson, Cey/on Ferns and
the Allies, with familiar notes on each
species, “Ceylon Observer” Press, n.p.,
1880.

I882:J. Bowie Wilson, Report on the
Present State and Future Prospects of
Lord Howe /s/ond, Thomas Richards,
Government Printer; Sydney, 1 882.

1 885: Frederick McGoy, Prodromus of
the Zoology of Victoria: figures and
descriptions of the living specimens of
all classes of the Victorian indigenous
on/ma/s, Volume I, John Ferres,
Government Printer; Melbourne, 1 885.

1 886: William Ramsay McNab, botany:
outlines of classification of plants,
Longmans, Green, London, 1 886.

c. 1894: Professor [i.e John] Lindley,
Descriptive botany: or. The art of
describing plants correctly In scientific
language, for self-instruction, and the
use of schools, 6th ed., Bradbury,

Evans, and Go., London, n.d.

bound with

FM. Bailey, botany Abridged, or How
to readily distinguish some of our
common plants; to which are added
a few additions to the companion
for the Queensland student of plant
life, Edmund Gregory, Government
Printer; Brisbane, 1 894.

Of particular interest is the reference to ‘Mueller’s
Park’ inscribed on the 1870 pamphlet ‘On the
application of phytology to the industrial Purposes
of life’. R.T.M. Pescott, William Guilfoyle’s
biographer and director of the Royal Botanic
Gardens Melbourne from 1957 to 1970, provides
anecdotal evidence that suggests Mueller had lived
in the Tweed area after Michael Guilfoyle (William’s
father) had purchased land in the late 1860s at

Cudgen. This has never been confirmed as fact.
Pescott, however, cites correspondence (1870) from
Mueller to Michael Guilfoyle in which he expresses
a desire to purehase land in the area but that he has
no available funds. Impressed by Mueller’s interest,
Michael Guilfoyle proposed to name a section in
his honour. But there is no evidence, to date, which
proves this happened — except the reference in the
re-discovered inscription!

8

Australian Garden History, 24 (1), July/August/September 2012

In conversation

But getting back to the conversation revealed in
the margins: shall we eavesdrop?

FvM: ‘the original and ancient appellation of
‘botanic garden’ is hardly any longer applicable
in the strict sense of the word . . . many of the
numerous local gardens passing under this name,
particularly in these colonies, have no claims
whatever to such a designation.’

WRG: ‘Correct’/‘Those of Geelong, Ballarat,
Sandhurst, Castlemaine are all called Botanical
Gardens but they do not possess any scientific
classification’

FvM-. ‘If much inconvenience was not involved
by the alteration of the term it would be
recommended to recognize the true botanic
garden of this age as scientific gardens; while all
those institutions in which no real phytologic
researches are carried out . . . might well be called
pleasure gardens or perhaps recreation grounds or
parks, according to the design for which they are
created, or in consonance with the requirements
for which they are maintained.’

WRG: ‘this cannot be said of the Melbourne
Bot Gardens now’

FvM: ‘As an universal rule, it is primarily the
aim of such an institution to bring together
with its available means the greatest possible
number of select plants from all the different
parts of the globe; and this is done to utilize them
for easy public inspection, to arrange them in
their impressive living forms, for a systematic,
geographic, medical, technical or economic
information, and to render them extensively
accessible for original observations and careful
records. By those means, not only the knowledge
of plants in all its branches is to be advanced
through local independent researches, conducted
in a real spirit of science, but also phytologic
instruction is to be diffused to the widest extent;
while simultaneously, by the introduction of
novel utilitarian species, local industries are to be
extended, or new resources to be originated; and
further, it is the aim to excite’

WRG: ‘Good’ / ‘But all of these need not
clash with the picturesque’

FvM: ‘All other objects are secondary, or the
institution ceases to be a real garden of science’

WRG: ‘Why not combine all ?’

FvM: ‘as the extent of the operations thus
designed must very largely depend on the natural
facilities and monetary means which are at
command for the purpose.’

WRG: ‘True’

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Marginal annotations by
William Guilfoyle on his
copy of The objects of a
botanic garden in relation
to industries’ (included
in Industrial and
Technological Museum,
Melbourne, Lecture
delivered ... during
the Second Session of
1 87 1 , Samuel Mullen,
Melbourne, 1 872)

Library of the Royal Botanic
Gardens and Domain Trust,
Sydney

FvM: ‘I have heard it often remarked by
thoughtful and circumspect visitors, when they
passed through our Botanic Garden, that now,
for the first time, they had learnt from whence
naturally came some particular plants, which
they had reared for years at their dwellings; or
that they had remained until then unaware of
the name, or the native locality, or any other
knowledge concerning plants, with which they
had by sight long been familiar.’

WRG: ‘Where were the labels ?’

Envoi

William Guilfoyle remained as Director for 36
years. A master animator, Melbourne Botanic
Gardens came alive to the possibility of other
vistas, and other worlds and states of being
under his sure and steady hand. And that is the
conclusion of history, a century after his death.
But first, we catch a sense of things to come, in
the margins, with Ferdinand von Mueller.

Janet Heywood is undertaking an on-going project to
catalogue the rare book collection held in the library of
the Royal Botanic Gardens and Domain Trust, Sydney,
and is currently involved in its Bicentenary Library
Project.

Australian Garden History, 24 (1), July/ August/September 2012

9

With its recent
rejuvenation, standard
massed floral displays
at Bendigo Botanic
Gardens (White Hills),
seen above in 1 990
and characterising
much municipal
horticulture of that
era, have now been
replaced with thematic
plantings (facing page)
interpreting local
botany, horticulture,
and history.
Photos Richard Aitken

10

Conserving Bendigo's legacy of
significant parks and gardens

Conservation planning has allowed
the City of Greater Bendigo to identify
culturally significant values of its historic
parks and gardens, guiding subsequent
master planning and development.

Bendigo's parks and gardens

Bendigo in central Victoria is a vibrant and
growing commercial and service centre in central
Victoria — one of the gems of the goldfields.

Its combination of significant housing and
commercial buildings, impressive streetscapes and
parks, and the lifestyle in the pleasant climate
makes Bendigo amongst the most attractive
regional cities in the country.

Associated with gold mining wealth comes not
only the noted nineteenth-century architecture,
but also a legacy of well-established public parks
and gardens. These open spaces have been created
and maintained over the last 150 years and form
a central core to identity of the Bendigo region.
Although recently affected by the severe water
restrictions, climatic conditions, and (most recently)
a large colony of grey-headed flying foxes, the main
parks and gardens in Bendigo and their surrounds
are an integral part of the city’s fabric.

Three parks and gardens with outstanding
cultural heritage significance form a green ‘string
of pearls’ along the Bendigo creek, and the fourth
is the main open space and park area for the
significant township of Eaglehawk. In each case,
the parks and gardens are linked to each other and
the surrounding urban areas with a network of
shared paths, meaning that these places are able
to be used and valued by all the community.

The City of Greater Bendigo manages Bendigo’s
major public parks and gardens on behalf of the
State of Victoria. As a local government authority,
the responsibility of planning, preserving,
interpreting, and maintaining these sites is core
business. The City Council employs a range of
skilled staff and consultants to undertake the
on-going planning and management of these
important cultural heritage sites, including
ground staff with expertise in horticulture
and arboriculture, to undertake operational
maintenance, and open space planners and
landscape architects to manage and guide the
strategic direction for the city and its assets.

The main historic parks of Bendigo are situated
along the Bendigo Creek, with Rosalind Park
(named after Shakespeare’s character from As You
Like It) being the central space in the city. Lake

Australian Garden History, 24 (1), July/August/September 2012

Weeroona is 2 km to the north and a further 2 kms
north is the Botanic Gardens (known as Bendigo
Botanic Gardens and formerly as White Hills
Botanic Gardens): a cycle path along the creek now
connects all three of these sites. The fourth, but by
no means the least of the significant parks in the
Bendigo area, is the Canterbury Gardens and Lake
Neangar precinct in Eaglehawk, an historic mining
township now part of the Bendigo urban area, but
fiercely maintaining its unique identity.

A strategic basis for conservation
management planning

Cultural heritage assets are regarded as key
elements in the both the story and the economy of
Bendigo. The legacy of architecture and gardens
left by the gold rush has long been marketed
as a key tourism asset and adds greatly to the
sense of identity for Bendigonians. All Victorian
councils are required to provide a Council Plan
to guide the policy and strategic direction of the
municipality for the four-year political term. The
current Greater Bendigo Council Plan places
a high degree of importance on the effective
planning and management of heritage and open
space assets.

In 2005, as a high-level strategic policy document
to guide the planning and management of the park
system, the council adopted the Greater Bendigo
Open Space Strategy. This identifies the needs of
the significant park lands to have Master Plans and
Management Plans drawn up to both inform the
community of the long term goals and aspirations
for each given site, but also to plan and budget for
coming developments and requirements. As part of
this process and in response to the clear demands

Cartography Tristan Andrews

from multiple sectors of our community, the
preparation of conservation management plans for
our significant parks has become a critical step in
effective planning.

The council has therefore recently commissioned
and adopted Conservation Management Plans
(CMPs) for the most significant sites, including
The Fernery (a portion of Rosalind Park),
Bendigo; Bendigo Botanic Gardens, White Hills;
Lake Weeroona, Bendigo; Canterbury Gardens &
Lake Neangar, Eaglehawk; and Lansell Gardens
& Queen Victoria Gardens (part of Rosalind
Park). The preparation of CMPs for these key
sites is a significant step in a strategic undertaking
to ensure that general planning and development
of the park system does not compromise the
cultural heritage aspects of these important sites.

Australian Garden History, 24 (1), July/ August/September 2012

11

The conservation management
planning process

These Conservation Management Plans have
been initiated by the council and prepared by
heritage horticultural consultants Lee Andrews
and Associates, each through a competitive
tendering process. The plans have proved to
be a great asset to the city and the community
in identifying the key elements of cultural
significance in the parks and gardens and allowing
an informed community debate about subsequent
planning and development proposals to occur.

The CMPs provide the evidence-based research to
allow informed design and development decisions
to be made. The recognition of a thorough and
robust process in dealing with cultural heritage
assets has been valuable both from a planning
point of view but also for the political decision-
making process. The elected members of the
Council have been able to make informed
decisions about planning and development
proposals based upon the information in the
CMPs and know that they are following current
‘best practice’ for cultural heritage management.

In turn, the community can be confident that the
characteristics that make their city so special are
being carefully and appropriately managed.

For each site, the preparation of the CMP is
the first step in a more detailed management
strategy and for each site a subsequent master
planning process is either underway or proposed.
The CMP sets the parameters for the design
and development of the new and contemporary
elements that are required in a modern city.

The Master Plans and subsequent development
then allows the most significant cultural heritage
assets to be showcased and interpreted, while
the intrusive elements can be removed or down
played with new design.

Reasons for success

As a relative newcomer to the community, at the
beginning, I was able to challenge some of the
long-held views in the community and encourage
a new approach to planning for our historic
parks. The combination of timing, political will,
and pressures for development have meant that
the conservation management planning process
in Bendigo has been quite successful. The
support of the senior management in the City,
the recognition of landscapes as an important
part of our City’s cultural heritage, and the
pressure bought to bear by various community
groups made the planning for our historic spaces
a political winner. The subsequent support by
the elected council members has meant that
the values of cultural heritage planning are now
imbedded at the commencement of further
development work — rather than being given
token acknowledgement at the end that so often
happens. A period of effective planning has now
clearly articulated the cultural heritage values
of our important parks and provided a guide for
future open space development of these assets.

Tim Buykx is a consultant Landscape Architect with
CPG Australia in Bendigo and was previously the
Coordinator Landscape and Open Space Planning at the
City of Greater Bendigo.

Site-specific plans and outcomes

Bendigo Botanic Gardens at White
Hills, gazetted in 1 857, was the first
of Bendigo’s reserves to be officially
devoted to open space. The site is now
being rejuvenated and extended, guided
by a CMP and ambitious thirty-year
Master Plan which recommends a
significant increase in the size of the
Gardens with restoration of the original
layout The master planning process
included various development options,
draft designs, and proposals that have
now been commented on by the
community. The CMP was fundamental
in the process and has allowed significant
works to be planned to ensure a
sensitive and historically accurate
reconstruction can occur: in 2009-10
the council undertook reconstruction of
the path network.

Rosalind Park, at the centre of
Bendigo and site of the original
government camp, plays a key role in
the cultural and recreational life of the
city. The Park straddles Bendigo Creek
and today hosts a legacy of significant
buildings and features dating from the
nineteenth century, as well as schools
and other public facilities. Two CMPs
have guided conservation works in key
areas of the site.

Lake Weeroona, two kilometres north
of town, was developed by the City
in response to other towns of similar
stature also having developed urban
lakes. In this case the transformation
of a low piece of wasted land to a
magnificent sheet of water and an
important recreation ground was seen

as a ‘coming of age’ for Bendigo. In the
process of preparing the CMP some
startling discoveries have been made
(see following article article by Lee
Andrews).

Canterbury Park: In the ‘rivalry stakes’
the local war was between Bendigo
and Eaglehawk Borough. In Eaglehawk,
competition to rival Rosalind Park
and other gardens saw the Borough
develop a significant park and lake area.
Council has now prepared a landscape
master plan to meet the needs of the
contemporary society for event space,
recreation assets, and other community
and environmental benefits. The master
planning has been heavily influenced by
the CMP prepared for the site.

12

Australian Garden History, 24 (1), July/August/September 2012

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Lee Andrews

'Get Guilfoyle': a re-discovered
landscape by one of Australia's
great landscape designers

Conservation management plans of
significant parks and gardens, such as
Bendigo's Lake Weeroona, are enhancing
our collective knowledge of Australian
garden history, including the role of
designer William Guilfoyle.

The thrill of the chase

Researching the history of gardens and landscapes
can be a complicated and frustrating process.

But occasionally serendipity or simply blind luck
intervenes, and a scrawled note, a rumour, or
throw-away comment leads to a wonderful and
exciting discovery. Recently one such happy
instance led to the identification of a previously
unknown early landscape from the celebrated
nineteenth-century landscape designer and
director of the Melbourne Botanic Gardens,
William Guilfoyle.

Soon after Guilfoyle commenced the systematic
and dramatic landscape transformation of the
Melbourne Botanic Gardens in 1873, word
quickly spread of his great skill as a landscape
designer, and he became increasingly in demand
around the colony. Over recent decades a search
for verifiable ‘Guilfoyle landscapes’ has been
conducted, resulting in a growing list of his both
confirmed and suspected landscape designs.

So, when in 2006 I discovered, in Bendigo’s 1878
council minutes, a cryptic note in the margin
exclaiming ‘Get Guilfoyle’, I was understandably
intrigued. Despite a close involvement researching
Bendigo’s parks and gardens, I had never come
across any association between Guilfoyle and that
city (although I subsequently found the reference
Paul Fox had made in his 2004 book Clearings).
And so I began tracing the truth behind the
tantalising command made so long ago.

Detail: Outstanding
garden history
discoveries continue
to be made in our
archives and collections,
and the c 1 878 plan
from which this detail
comes — probably not
in William Guilfoyle’s
hand, but the design
attributed to him —
ranks as one of the
most significant new
documents in the
pantheon of Guilfoylean
scholarship of the last
two decades.

Artist unknown,

‘Nolan St. Reserve' (detail),
n.d., pendl, ink, and
watercolour on paper:
Collection Bendigo Art
Gallery

Australian Garden History, 24 (1), July/ August/September 2012

13

Guilfoyle's landscapes: the list to date

During his long incunnbency at the
Melbourne Botanic Gardens (1873-
1909) William Guilfoyle’s services were
highly sought both by public institutions
and private individuals, to advise, and in
many cases, design or re-design, their
parks and gardens.The list of Guilfoyle
landscapes continues to grow.

It has been confirmed that in addition
to his duties at Melbourne Botanic
Gardens, Guilfoyle implemented Joseph
Sayce’s landscape plan forVictoria’s
Government House and its surrounding
Domain, and designed a number of
metropolitan and provincial public and
institutional gardens.These include Trinity
Gollege Grounds, Parkville (1876),
Warrnambool Botanic Gardens (1877),
Koroit Botanic Gardens (1880),

Horsham Botanic Gardens (1880),
Stawell Hospital Gardens (cl 880),
Horsham Hospital Gardens ( 1 880-8 1 ),

Hamilton Botanic Gardens (1881),
Prince’s Park, Maryborough (1883),
Gamperdown Botanic Gardens and
Public Park (1888-90), Melbourne
Teachers’Training Gollege,

Garlton ( 1 892), and the Japanese
Garden in Melbourne’s Treasury
Gardens (c. 1 904). He also visited and
advised on Sale Botanic Gardens (1881)
and drew up a plan, only partially
implemented, to remodel Golac Botanic
Gardens (1910).

Guilfoyle also designed a number of
private country gardens during the late
1 890s and early 1 900s.Those for which
there is evidence of his involvement
are Derriweit Heights, Mount Macedon
(pre- 1 896), Dalvui,Terang ( 1 898),
Mooleric, Birregurra ( 1 903- 1 0),Turkeith,
Birregurra ( 1 905- 1 906), and Mawallok,
Beaufort ( 1 909), and probably Banool,
Yarra Glen, and his country property
Mount Yule, Healesville.

Indeed, so prolific a landscape designer
did Guilfoyle become that he was
censured by the Minister for Lands
during the late I 870s for being away
from his duties at the Melbourne
Botanic Gardens too often, forcing
Guilfoyle to use colleague Robert
Percy Whitworth to complete (under
his direction) plans for Koroit and
Horsham Botanic Gardens in I 880,
and the Stawell and Horsham Hospital
Gardens (c. 1 880-8 1 ). Guilfoyle was
further publicly criticised in the Leader
in I 882 for neglecting the Melbourne
Botanic Gardens in favour of designing
for wealthy country patrons. One of
those implicated is the homestead
garden of Rosemount, Southern Gross,
near Koroit, which he designed in 1 880.
Many of these earlier private gardens
are yet to be discovered.

I had recently been engaged by the City of
Greater Bendigo, in central Victoria, to research
the history of its early parks and gardens in order
to prepare conservation management plans to
guide the future protection and development of
each one. Thus I was in a privileged position to
delve into the City’s comprehensive archives. And
they didn’t disappoint.

Within their pages I discovered a wealth of
information about the long forgotten story of
Guilfoyle and Bendigo. The beautifully handwritten
council minutes clearly indicated that from as
early as 1874, Bendigo (or Sandhurst as it was
then known) council not only knew of the talented
landscape designer but attempted to secure his
services for designing the town’s central reserves.

In another stroke of luck, a plan of Lake Weeroona
(c.1878) was recently rediscovered after being lost
and forgotten for 16 years. Dr Michele Matthews,
Archives Officer with the Bendigo Regional
Archives Centre, remembered discovering and
cataloguing in 1993 an early plan of Lake Weeroona
bearing Guilfoyle’s name. After a protracted search,
and with the assistance of local garden designer,
horticulturist, and writer Kevin Walsh, the plan was
discovered in a drawer at the Bendigo Art Gallery.
Although probably not in Guilfoyle’s hand, it is
the only contemporary plan linking the designer to
Lake Weeroona yet uncovered.

Attracting William Guilfoyle

Bendigo, like other nineteenth century townships
throughout Victoria, had been originally laid out
with generous provision for public parks, gardens,
and reserves. In a town where gold mining
had both delivered prosperity and ravaged the
landscape, the importance of such green spaces
was particularly strong.

By 1861, Bendigo’s botanic garden, in the nearby
hamlet of White Hills, had been laid out, and by
the early 1870s the council was keen to beautify
two additional reserves in the town centre. One,
the former site of a government camp, had already
undergone some improvement — this would
later become Rosalind Park. The other, a dusty,
mining-ravaged section of the Bendigo Greek, was
to be transformed into ‘an ornamental reserve and
lake’ under a plan proposed by Mayor Dugald
Macdougall, who saw the site as Bendigo’s answer
to rival Ballarat’s Lake Wendouree. Development
of this site, initially named Nolan Street Reserve,
was to be aided by a substantial government
grant available to help fund such projects. In
1874 Bendigo council wrote to William Guilfoyle
requesting his services for both reserves. Guilfoyle
was, however, unavailable and council, eschewing
his suggestion of another landscape designer,
preferred to wait.

14

Australian Garden History, 24 (1), July/August/September 2012

Four years later, delayed but undeterred by the
rather inconvenient routing of the Bendigo— Swan
Hill rail line through the Nolan Street Reserve
(1875—76), the council revisited plans to construct
the lake and reserve. ‘Get Guilfoyle’ was the
command recorded in the minutes of its meeting of
23 May 1878. This time, Guilfoyle was available.

Guilfoyle in Bendigo

Two months later, on 29 June 1878, William
Guilfoyle arrived in Bendigo and proceeded
to lay out ‘on the ground’ his design for what
would soon become known as Lake Weeroona.
‘This gentleman arrived in Sandhurst on
Saturday evening’, noted the Bendigo Advertiser
(2 July 1878), ‘and yesterday set about the work
of pegging off the ground’ :

It is intended to fornn a large lake, which
will have one or two islands, but care will
be taken to give every facility the space at
command permits for boating. Surrounding
the lake there are to be walks and plots of
ground planted with shrubs and grass. If Mr
Guilfoyle's plan is carried out it will form a
wonderful transformation to be made in
what now is a most unsightly part of the city,
and at the same time answer the purpose
of providing a pleasant and very enjoyable
place of retreat for the public. Mr Guilfoyle
is much impressed with the site, and thinks it
can be turned into an excellent reserve.

While in Bendigo, Guilfoyle also visited the
Botanic Gardens at White Hills, and the centrally
located Rosalind Park, which had been further
developed by Samuel Gadd over the previous four
years, Guilfoyle having been unavailable for the
task. Both sites had been under the curatorship

of Gadd since 1873—74. According to newspaper
reports, Guilfoyle was very impressed with the
flourishing condition of both gardens. Thus began
a relationship between the two men that, the
record shows, involved the sharing of plants and
local plant knowledge for many years.

On 6 July 1878, the Parks Committee reported
that Guilfoyle had devoted two days to examine
the Nolan Street Reserve and lay it out:

The design has been completed, marked off
on the ground by pegs, and placed to scale,
with levels taken as plan now produced. ...

The Gommittee feel deeply indebted to
Mr Guilfoyle for the great interest he has
manifested in this project of the Gouncil, the
zeal and industry he displayed in finishing the
complete laying out of the grounds while in
Sandhurst ... as well as his offer to again make
periodical visits to superintend the carrying
out of the design he has left with the Gouncil.
[Bendigo Advertiser, 6 July I 878, supplement]

Over the next two months, Guilfoyle
corresponded with the council and its curator
Samuel Gadd, sending plants (and a swan) and
again visiting on 5 September.

By early 1879 islands were formed

and attention turned to planting. In late June
Guilfoyle again visited to inspect ‘Weeroona Park’
(now named after an Aboriginal word for ‘rest’)
and advise on implementing his planting scheme.
On his return to Melbourne, Guilfoyle dispatched
120 plants from the Melbourne Botanic Gardens
for the reserve. These supplemented the 1250
plants Gadd already had in stock, ‘including the
various species named by Mr Guilfoyle’. Council
authorised Gadd to also purchase ‘a dozen of the

Extract from Parks
Committee to Council,
23 May 1 878:

VPRS 169 36! Pi
Sandhurst
Council Inwards
Correspondence —

Unit 1 4: Bendigo
Regional Archives Centre.

Australian Garden History, 24 (1), July/ August/September 2012

15

pepper tree and 36—40 specimen plants and some
pampass [sic] grass’, and to ‘carry out planting the
list of Guilfoyle’s plants as far as practical’.

Fortunately, a last-minute proposal by some
councillors to substitute ninety per cent of
Guilfoyle’s undoubtedly richly diverse planting list
with various types of olives and mulberries — to
demonstrate the viability of establishing two new
industries, oil and silk production — was dropped.
Instead, the council allowed Gadd to use his
discretion as to the number of ‘specimens of the
various economic and other plants’ that should
be planted at the reserve. A number of olives
were indeed planted, with or without Guilfoyle’s
agreement, as many old specimens remain today.

An estimated 5000 visitors attended the official
opening of Lake Weeroona on 22 October 1879,
extraordinary turn-out for a Wednesday afternoon.
By this time, boat houses (for rowing boats and a
steamer), a jetty, caretaker’s cottage, and decorative
gates in ‘iron and wood’ (designed by local architect
Wilhelm Vahland) had been constructed, and
planting was at least partially completed. In 1879
alone, the council had spent £6114 on excavating,
shaping, and planting the surroundings of Lake
Weeroona — a task that absorbed almost a fifth of its
total budget for that year.

The immediate success of Lake Weeroona inspired
neighbouring localities to create their own water
feature. In 1883, Lake Neangar was opened in
nearby Eaglehawk. In that same year, Guilfoyle
visited Maryborough’s Prince’s Park to advise on
layout and planting around its new lagoon, later
named Lake Victoria, also suggesting that at least
two islands be added to beautify it.

Postcard view of Lake Guilfoylc's landscape design style

Weeroona, c. 1 909. ,, , . i-rri

State Library ofVictoria Although his reports and planting list tor Lake

(H42700/I25) Wccroona have been lost, Guilfoyle’s landscape

style and plant preferences are well understood
through his prolific writings, surviving plans,
and extant gardens. In each of his landscapes,
Guilfoyle drew on a characteristic suite of design
elements including sweeping lawns (‘over which
the visitors could roam at pleasure’), fine vistas,
broad serpentine perimeter paths, and picturesque
water bodies studded with islands.

Guilfoyle’s plant preferences were similarly well
defined. In all his gardens Guilfoyle skillfully
mixed both Australian and exotic species. Plants
offering strong architectural form and vivid
leaf colour were great favourites, and he was
particularly fond of the aesthetic contribution
provided by subtropical rainforest vegetation.

In his suggestions for tree planting at Sale and
Hamilton Botanic Gardens in 1881, for example,
Guilfoyle recommended pines (Ponderosa,
Monterey and Aleppo), and species of cypress,
elm, oak, ash, pittosporum, fig, poplar,
pepper tree and New Zealand laurel along
boundaries and avenues. Trees including his
favoured Moreton Bay Fig (Ficus macrophylla),
Port Jackson Fig (Ficus rubiginosa), and Canary
Island Date Palm (Phoenix canariensis) were
suggested as solitary specimens and for clumped
plantings.

Early photographs of Lake Weeroona show the
unmistakable hand of Guilfoyle, with silhouettes
of pines and cypresses clearly visible, and willows.
New Zealand Flax, Giant Reed (Arundo donax),
and Pampas Grass (Cortaderia selloana) gracing
the lake edge and the three islands. Deciduous
trees and eucalypts are also identifiable.

Today, much of Guilfoyle’s landscape style
remains recognisable at Lake Weeroona. Mature
signature trees such as Bunya Pine, Moreton Bay
Fig and Canary Island Pine, picturesque islands,
and remnants of his serpentine perimeter path
are testament to Guilfoyle’s vision for the site.
Arborist John Beetham and I undertook a tree
survey of the Lake Weeroona reserve in 2007 and
identified many trees (see table) that date from
Guilfoyle’s involvement with Lake Weeroona and
clearly reflect his planting Guilfoyle palette.

Interestingly, the survey also found two highly
unusual eucalypt species at Lake Weeroona.

These were identified and assessed by John
Hawker of Heritage Victoria as Creswick Apple
Box or Scent Bark (Eucalyptus aromaphloia subsp.
aromaphloia) — an extremely unusual species,
unknown in cultivation — and four specimens of
Broad-leaved Red Ironbark (Eucalyptus fibrosa
subsp. fibrosa) — a species native to New South
Wales, and the only specimen known in Victoria.

16

Australian Garden History, 24 (1), July/August/September 2012

Aerial photograph of
Lake Weeroona from a
hot air balloon, 2007.
Photo courtesy
Vivien Newton

INVENTORY OF TREES AT FAKE
WEEROONA REFEECTINGTHE EEGACY
OFWIEEIAM GUIEFOYEE

Araucaria bidwillii Bunya Pine (x 2)

Brachychiton roseus subsp. roseus Hybrid Flanne Tree
Ceratonia siliqua Carob Tree (x 2)

Corymbia citriodora Lemon-scented Gum (x 2)
Corymbia macu/ata Spotted Gum
Cupressus torulosa Bhutan Gypress
Eucalyptus cladocalyx Sugar Gum (x 3)

Eucalyptus melliodora Yellow Box (x 2)

Eucalyptus sideroxylon Ironbark (x 5)

Ficus macrophylla Moreton Bay Fig
Ficus rubiginosa Port Jackson Fig*

Olea europaea subsp. europaea Gommon European
Olive (many specimens)

Pinus canadensis Ganary Island Pine (x 3)

Pinus halepensis Aleppo Pine (x 3)*

Pinus radiata Monterey Pine (x 6)

Platanus X acerifolia London Plane Tree (x 2)

Quercus robur English Oak

Salix babylonica and Salix alba subsp. vitellina Willow
(many specimens)

Schinus areira Pepper Tree (x 5)

Ulmus X hollandica Dutch Elm (many specimens)
Ulmus X hollandica ‘Purpurascens’ Dutch Elm*

* An asterisk denotes three trees considered worthy
of nomination for inclusion on the National Trust of
Australia (Victoria) Register of Significant Trees.

Gadd or Guilfoyle may have been responsible for
these plantings.

William Guilfoyle is recognised today as one of
the finest landscape designers of the nineteenth
century in Victoria, and arguably Australia. Lake
Weeroona was one of his earliest landscapes,
developed while also undertaking his significant
redesign of the Melbourne Botanic Gardens. Lake
Weeroona stands today as an important and early,
but almost totally forgotten, Guilfoyle landscape.

The distinctive landscape Guilfoyle envisaged
and then created is in no small part responsible
for Lake Weeroona’s outstanding reputation and
popularity as a place of great beauty and serenity.
This mature landscape continues to illustrate
Guilfoyle’s distinctive and celebrated style. While
recent drought and age have caused a loss in
richness of plant varieties, and pathways have
been somewhat altered since Guilfoyle’s plan was
implemented, his key signature elements — a body
of water and islands, serpentine paths through
broad swards of lawn, distinctive tree plantings
combining Australian and exotic species, and
fine vistas — still remain, a testament to his vision
so very many years ago. And it all began with a
simple command: ‘Get Guilfoyle’!

Lee Andrews is a horticulturist and heritage consultant
who has prepared conservation management plans for
regional botanic gardens and other significant public
parks and gardens throughout Victoria. Gomprehensive
research undertaken for her Lake Weeroona
Gonservation Management Plan (2008) has formed the
basis of this article.

Australian Garden History, 24 (1), July/ August/September 2012

17

■ajuji;

The great hedge at Buda

The front garden at
Buda showing the site
being prepared for
replanting of the iconic
cypress hedge.
Photo Richard Aitken

Aided by Australian Garden History
Society funding, Buda at Castlemaine — for
over 120 years a private garden, but since
1981 open to the public — has been able to
replant its iconic cypress hedge.

Buda Historic Home and Garden is a house
museum surrounded by a three-acre garden, on
a south facing steep slope on the outskirts of
Castlemaine in central Victoria. Its great hedge
consisted of twelve Cupressus macrocarpa planted
in the years between 1863 and 1869. According
to Miss Hilda Leviny, the last owner of Buda, it
was Victorine Cross, the grandfather of long-time
gardener at Buda, Walter Cross (1891 — 1951)
who planted the hedge. Together with the
western boundary planting of Pinm canariensis
and Cupressus lusitanica the hedge formed a
windbreak for the house against the southerlies
prevalent in central Victoria. The small hedge

plantings are clearly visible in an 1869 photograph
and it appears as a well-kempt hedge throughout
the rest of the nineteenth century and well into
the twentieth.

Iconic photographs, of the hedge being trimmed
with hand shears by Walter Cross and of family
members of various ages posed beside it, show
that the hedge was a favourite and well-cared for
backdrop to the colourful perennial border facing
the house. The Leviny grandchildren all spoke
fondly of their childhood games in the hedge, on
one occasion losing one of a family of Australian
terriers in there. From the time Buda became
a museum property in 1981 the amphitheatre
on the northern side of the hedge has been
used for functions such as plays and weddings.

Opposite page: Sequential views commencing in 1 865 depicting
a century’s growth of Buda’s iconic cypress hedge.

Photos courtesy Buda Historic Home and Garden, Castlemaine

18

Australian Garden History, 24 (1), July/August/September 2012

On several occasions the Thompson Foundry
Band has serenaded garden visitors from its
sheltered depths.

There is no recorded information as to when
or why the clipped and controlled hedge grew
out into a three-storeyed leviathan. Speculation
that the hedge was left uncut for the duration
of the Second World War is credible as gardener
Walter Cross was in his seventies and labour was
difficult to obtain. By the time a Committee of
Management took control of the property in 1981
the hedge was a great wave of green, not only
filling its allotted space, but also overhanging
surrounding paths and garden beds. Efforts where
made at this time to remove vast amounts of
debris within the tangled branches and to shore
up overhanging branches. The annual trimming
by staff, sessional labour, and volunteers was
taken over by trained arborists when changes to
occupational health and safety laws were made.
Further efforts where made in 2007 to again
clean debris and remove bracing wire that was
strangling branches, leaving dead spots of foliage
across the face of the hedge. Efforts to reshape the
hedge were unsuccessful and access to the hedge
became increasingly difficult.

The hedge was unaffected by the ten years of
drought which ended so dramatically in 2010.

It continued to grow, to the detriment of the
surrounding shrubs and trees, many of which
did not survive. Continuing efforts to keep the
hedge in check were hampered by lack of funding.
The annual cost of three to four thousand dollars
for maintenance often forced the Committee to
decide between the needs of the hedge and the
other forty-five mature trees on the property,
which also required professional management.

Consideration was given during the last years of
the drought to the removal of the hedge. The fire
hazard posed not only to the hedge itself, but the
adjacent border of fine conifers and the fabric of
the house was exacerbated by bushland only two
blocks away. The radiant heat from a hedge fire
would cause enormous damage maybe even the
end of Buda and the beginning of ‘Buda Estate’
with eight fine McMansions enjoying the vista
from its prime position in the town. The Leviny
family’s intention that the hedge would give
protection from the southerly winds, while still
allowing views to the garden and town had been
completely lost. The fine bay windows added to
the house during the 1890s no longer commanded
views of either.

Consultation with various heritage authorities
prior to the hedge’s collapse produced a generally

Australian Garden History, 24 (1), July/ August/September 2012

19

The poor state of
Buda’s hedge is evident
in this photograph
taken in 20 1 I , shortly
before removal.

Photo courtesy Buda
Historic Home and Garden,
Castlemaine

negative, often hysterical response. More helpful
was the network of the CEOs of various botanic
gardens in Australia via Botanic Gardens Australia
and New Zealand Inc. (BGANZ) who shared their
experiences and their ideas with the Committee of
Management.

Saturating rains through 2010 brought a dramatic
breaking of the drought and regularly caused
flood damage to homes, roads, and bridges within
the locality. The long-dry interior of the hedge
became saturated, and in late November that
year tornado-like winds tore through Castlemaine
catching the hedge’s branches and snapping
them off. A scene of devastation greeted staff
and volunteers when they arrived to check the
damage. The hedge lay in ruins. It had collapsed
into the amphitheatre.

The Committee needed to consider several
solutions to the problem, which were put forward
by concerned horticulturists. One was to clean out
all the debris and dead branches and sky-scape
the hedge much like a pleached configuration on
stilts. But this was not the original intention of the
Leviny family and such a structure would be very
likely to collapse in the next high wind. Another
suggestion was to remove all the dead branches
out and wait for it to regrow — with Cupressus
macrocarpa, however, it is most unlikely that such
regrowth would occur.

After due consideration it was finally decided the
best solution would be to remove and replant the
hedge. Gaining a permit from Heritage Victoria
to undertake this was an arduous and drawn-
out process with the quartz dry-stone retaining
wall being the sticking point. These stones had
frequently collapsed on each other due to children
climbing over them and once an echidna had

pulled apart a large section. Regularly it had been
rebuilt, repaired, or sourced for individual rocks
needed elsewhere, so that its integrity as a heritage
structure was doubtful. Finally permission was
given to remove and store the stones rather than
saving the retainer. This represented a saving of
$15,000, and allowed an excavator to move in and
lift out each tree individually.

Eighteen truckloads (46 tonnes) of material were
removed for chipping at the local transfer station.
This was a massive undertaking given the difficulty
of the site. The Mount Alexander Shire covered
the transfer station costs and the Australian
Garden History Society donated the funds for the
removal cost, much to the delight and relief of the
Committee. It was observed during the excavation
works that the trees at both ends of the hedge had
much more extensive root systems than those in its
centre. The latter being much more crowded and
not able to be blown about, were found to have a
shallow root plate (a diameter of only 1.5 m), giving
support to the adage that tree movement leads to
strong root growth.

Once the hedge was removed the flood of south
light into the house was quite remarkable and
the views of the town and the springtime garden
were amazing. There was very little negative
reaction to its removal. Eeviny descendents were
sad but understanding and keen to see the new
hedge planted. There have been one or two
shocked visitors but many more commented
‘Congratulations — at last that fire hazard has gone’.

Currently the site is having soil remediation and
the plan is to replant with Cupressus macrocarpa in
late autumn or early winter so that the new trees
can establish themselves before our usual hot and
dry summer arrives. Replanting of the trees and
shrubs surrounding the old hedge that were lost
during the drought will be done at this time, as
will reconstruction of the retaining wall.

Finally, the issue for current and future
Committees of Management is the capacity not
only to maintain aging trees but also the retention
of the garden’s integrity as an entity. Despite
herculean efforts to raise Buda’s income in order
to sustain such expensive undertakings these
tasks seem almost beyond all possibility. Rational
decisions regarding the future of the garden
need to be made and there can be no place for
hysterical reaction to such decisions.

Dianne Thomson is Grounds Curator at Buda Historic
Home and Garden, Castlemaine, Victoria.

www.budacastlemaine.org

20

Australian Garden History, 24 (1), July/August/September 2012

I

,1 /.-

T 1

. i*

Mandy Stroebel

A voice in the wilderness:
Gwenda Sheridan, cultural
landscape crusader

Since settling in Tasmania twenty-five years
ago, Gwenda Sheridan has been actively
involved in lobbying for the protection
and preservation of its magnificent cultural
landscapes. It has been a long battle, one
that would leave a less determined person
weary and demoralised.

T’ll be wearing something knitted,’ said Gwenda,
by way of describing herself for our first meeting
at Zum in Salamanca Place. ‘Probably a beanie
with a pom-pom.’ And she is. When we meet,
Gwenda explains that her generation prefers
knitted garments to the high-tech fabrics found in
outdoor-clothing shops. The observation is classic

Sheridan. Gwenda instinctively notices the details
that give a place (or a generation) its character.
Throughout our long discourse on subjects ranging
from heritage legislation, to land use and planning
and the recent Brighton By-Pass debacle, a single
phrase recurs like a bell chiming in the belfry
of a country church: ‘character of place’. For
years, Gwenda’s focus has been the recognition
of cultural landscapes. At times, hers has been
almost a lone voice in the wilderness.

Gwenda Sheridan
pictured during the
20l0AGHSAnnual
National Gonference,
held in Launceston and
northern Tasmania, at
which she delivered
the keynote address on
conifers in Tasmanian
cultural landscapes
(see AGH, 22 (4), 201 I ).
Photo Richard Aitken

‘Cultural landscape’ refers to natural land that
has been modified by human activity. Tasmania is
rich in cultural landscape history, which has slowly
emerged as landscape layers, reflecting composite
and complex patterns of interrelationships
between people, places, and events that have

Australian Garden History, 24 (1), July/ August/September 2012

21

The historic setting of
Salmon Ponds contains
one ofTasmania’s
rich collections of
cultivated trees, the
history of which has
been extensively
documented by
Gwenda Sheridan as
part of her research
and analysis of
Tasmania’s designed
landscapes.

Photo Richard Aitken

remained in the landscape. This is a synthesis of
Gwenda’s definition of ‘cultural landscapes’ in
The Companion to Tasmanian History.

It is difficult to get Gwenda to talk about herself
Only towards the end of our few hours together
do I manage to coerce her into providing a brief
history of herself, her early influences, and her
other interests. Her love of the natural landscape
was nurtured in her early years, growing up with
the Sydney bush around Gordon on Sydney’s
North Shore. ‘In those days, I crossed a long
suspension foot-bridge to East Gordon. It spanned
such a lovely gully. I remember the bird calls, the
maiden hair ferns under the bridge, and the tall,
old trees.’ Her family also spent many holidays
at Blackheath in the Blue Mountains, where her
maternal grandparents owned a cottage. Gwenda
also remembers her grandparents’ marvellous
collection of romantic tourist literature gathered
during their extensive travels in 1937. Always
an avid reader, she loved trawling through this
material, with its picturesque images of wonderful
landscapes in countries far and wide.

Her grandmother and mother helped fuel
her interest in gardens at an early age. ‘With
grandmother, it was a love of flowers; with
mother, it was developing an interest in seeds,
sowing, soil, and all that sort of stuff I learned
about compost and earthworms, getting my
hands thoroughly dirty, about the same time as

I learned to read.’ When Gwenda was just seven
her mother consented to her accompanying an
elderly gentleman on his walks ‘up the street’
and into the Sydney bushland. Having fallen off
a ladder and badly injuring his back, he walked
very slowly with the aid of two sticks. Years
later, Gwenda discovered that this much loved
gentleman, Thomas Price, was a doctor who had
been instrumental in eradicating mosquitoes
from Toowoomba, and had also played a
formative part in town planning in Queensland.
During their sojourns. Dr Price taught her a
great deal about indigenous flowers, the wildlife,
and the ‘place’. He quietly requested her mother
to buy her Thistle Harris’s book Wildf lowers of
Australia, which she has (with his inscription) to
this day.

Gwenda attended Gordon Public School,
where she was Dux, and then Hornsby Girls’
High School. After obtaining a Commonwealth
scholarship, she studied for a B.A. with majors
in geography and history at Sydney University.
Music, which has always played a key role in her
life, became a part of her degree as well. Gwenda
began playing the piano when she was seven and
now plays the flute in a small group. ‘Music is
my sanity. I can escape into its beauty, harmony,
and aesthetics. From my love of music developed
my love and understanding of landscape. The
principles of harmony with sound and with
nature, to me, are one and the same.’

22

Australian Garden History, 24 (1), July/August/September 2012

After graduating with Honours in geography,
Gwenda began teaching as a junior academic
at the University of New England. ‘Armidale
was such a wonderful place in the country,’ she
muses. ‘I had an office that looked out over
fields and I used to watch the seasonal changes;

I loved that.’ But her time in Armidale was
short-lived. The sudden and unexpected death
of her father — ‘my rock’ — brought a return to
Sydney to look after her mother. Back at the
alma mater with a similar teaching position, she
began a Masters Honours research degree under
English-trained Dennis Jeans, who at the time
was a national leader in historical geography and
cultural landscapes. ‘My field was Kosciusko
National Park and the land-use conflict within
this area was enormous. I was researching at the
cusp of when Australia commenced converting
its highly valued natural areas to national parks.’

Her career seemed untroubled. Marriage
followed and then two daughters. After first
visiting Tasmania in 1970 and considering it the
most beautiful place she’d ever seen, Gwenda
returned sixteen years later with her two young
daughters to live. It was a life-changing decision:
leaving family, friends, a home, and a much-
loved garden to settle in a place where she had
almost no connections. Eiving in the countryside,
she was often confronted by the forestry
industry. ‘I’d never seen a log truck before,’
she tells me. ‘It was an awful shock.’ She still
remembers accompanying a photographer and
colleague to see a ‘clear fell’ coupe at Memory
Creek in the north-east highlands of Tasmania.
‘What a memory,’ she says, shaking her head,
‘such utter devastation.’

Gwenda bought an old nineteenth-century
farmhouse and began renovating it. ‘I thought
of it (and the garden I began to create) as
my ‘Walden Pond’. It had its own stream, its
resident platypus, eels, snakes, quoll, owl, and
much else besides.’ American author Henry
Thoreau is one of Gwenda’s gurus. ‘I love his
wisdom.’ ‘Walden Pond’ is a reference to his
description of living on the shores of Eake
Walden, Massachusetts, in Walden; or, Life in
the Woods (1845). Another guru is architect/
planner/philosopher Christopher Alexander.
Gwenda strongly identified with his influential
book A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings,
Construction (1977) and thought his twenty-
first century book Nature of Order inspirational.
Alexander is described as ‘now retired though
ceaselessly active’, a phrase I can’t help thinking
will be attributed to Gwenda in her later years.

When she arrived in Tasmania, Gwenda had
already decided to embark on a different career
path, determined to focus on the things that
mattered to her, the things she was passionate
about: heritage, place, planning, landscape, and
geography. After a brief stint as a planner at
Eaunceston City Council — ‘I didn’t make a very
good development application planner,’ she says —
she worked for some years in the state library
service. All the time, she was thinking, reading,
and writing.

Since moving to Hobart in 1995, Gwenda has
been self-employed as a cultural landscape
consultant. In the intervening years, she has
gathered a formidable knowledge of State
planning in many area — statutory, environmental,
recreation, and historical landscape planning.

Her many studies, published works, reports,
and submissions are testimony to her major
contributions in these areas. She is currently
writing a history of the Eaunceston Horticultural
Society. In addition to her paid work, Gwenda
has been a tireless campaigner for the protection
of pre- and post-settlement landscapes, from
historic urban precincts to forested wilderness.

Her detailed expert submissions to local planning
agencies and state and federal parliamentary
committees reveal her depth and breadth of
knowledge in subjects from the expansion of the

Many Australian
cemeteries contain
remarkable and often
under-appreciated
plant collections with
Tasmania’s historic
cemeteries boasting an
especially impressive
collection of mature
exotic trees.

Photo Stuart Read

Australian Garden History, 24 (1), July/ August/September 2012

23

Details of UK
research and planning
can be obtained
online at
www.naturalengland.

org.uk
followed by typing
into the search
facility either
Landscape Character
Assessment and/or
Historic Landscape
Characterisation.

Midlands Highway to the forestry industry and
beyond. These submissions highlight her principal
concern: the absence of integrated State planning
and heritage laws and the continuing lack of
recognition of cultural landscapes.

Gwenda would like to see a landscape character
assessment similar to that adopted in the United
Kingdom, introduced in Tasmania. In the UK,
the characterisation process involves identifying,
classifying, and describing landscape character. It
is used as a tool to manage (rather than obstruct)
change; to ensure that change does not undermine
that which is distinct and valued in a landscape.
The assessment takes into account every aspect
of landscape from the physical and the built
form, to the perceptual and aesthetic. ‘It is the
particular interaction of different components
of our environment (natural and cultural) and

Tools of trade for the
conifer enthusiast.
Photo Stuart Read

our perception of this that is most important.’

Such a tool provides a structured
approach to identifying the
character and distinctiveness of
present-day landscapes, with their
multi-layered history of human
action and perception. ‘It’s a
holistic, aggregated approach; it
doesn’t focus on specific sites or
built heritage. Instead it seeks
to understand the fabric of a place — an urban
precinct, a town or a region; to see landscapes as
intricate, complex, evolving tapestries; to see the
patterns that have emerged in their development.’
Gwenda believes the application of a landscape
character assessment in Tasmania is a vital tool in

planning for its sustainable development.

This interview
took place before
Gwenda was able
to comment on the
newly released draft
document Assessing
Historic Heritage
Significance produced
by the Department
of Primary Industry
Parks, Water and
Environment. The
application of this to
Tasmania's Historic
Cultural Heritage
Act 1 995 will be
the subject of many
more conversations,
particularly as it
completely ignores
living heritage.

In their thirteen years in office, successive Uabor
governments in Tasmania have been unwilling to
embrace a modern twenty-first century approach
to heritage matters. ‘With Jim Bacon,’ Gwenda
notes, ‘there was a movement towards the
recognition of cultural landscapes and significant
trees, but since 2004, it’s been a non-event’. This
despite Richard Mackay’s excellent report in
2005 aimed at bringing Tasmania’s 1995 Historic
Cultural Heritage Act into the twenty-first
century. In 2007, the government responded to
the Mackay report with a paper ‘Managing our
Heritage’, the inadequacies of which upset many
archaeologists and historians. Cultural landscapes
were dispensed with in a single line suggesting
that they were just too difficult and overwhelming
to understand. ‘The whole of Tasmania can be
interpreted as layers of cultural landscapes,’
Gwenda argues. Tasmania has the most
concentrated heritage in Australia, the most easily

accessible heritage, and the most diverse heritage.
A lot of it is still extant and readily visible.

‘You can still see the earliest patterns in the
evolution of cultural landscapes in Tasmania.’

Gwenda is frustrated by the government’s inability
to engage with the significance of Tasmania’s
heritage. ‘Heritage needs to be interlinked with
planning but it’s not happening,’ she says. ‘It’s so
sad,’ she continues. ‘The heritage landscape values
of this island for tourism have been noted for at
least 160 years. So many people see the beauty of
what is here and they fall in love with it. Heritage is
intimately interlinked with tourism and the beauty
of place, but current governments seem unwilling
or unable to grasp the significance of what this
means.’ Gwenda believes that Tasmania could be
developed strategically along cultural lines. Villages,
towns, cities and regions could be developed and
rejuvenated according to their distinctive characters
and historical attributes to attract tourists.

Periodically, Gwenda delves into her seemingly
bottomless Mary Poppins— like bag and produces
reports, submissions, discussion papers, extracts of
legislation, and a myriad of other documents related
to planning and heritage issues in Tasmania. Now,
she focuses her attention on a copy of the Land
Use Planning and Approvals Amendment (State
and Regional Strategies) Act 2009. ‘These are the
most substantial changes to the laws relating to
land use planning and approvals since the 1940s,’
she observes. The amendments impose a single
planning framework at state, regional, and local
level. Gwenda sees the changes as, on the whole,
excluding significant community involvement
in planning decisions. This has implications,
particularly for regional projects where the rigorous
checks and balances applicable to projects of State
significance will not apply.

When I left Gwenda in the gloaming of early
evening, I felt a mixture of despair and admiration.
Despair that after so many years of concerted,
articulate lobbying for recognition of our unique
cultural landscapes, we appear to be no closer to
developing a comprehensive approach to their
integration into planning decisions; and admiration
that Gwenda still has the energy and passion to
continue to be one of their greatest advocates.

I can only hope that in the years ahead, many new
voices will be added to hers and that one day, my
great grand-children will see the rich tapestry of the
landscapes we now take for granted.

Mandy Stroebel is a Hobart-based writer A shorter
version of this article was first published in Blue Gum,
newsletter of the AGHS Tasmanian Branch, Spring 2011.

24

Australian Garden History, 24 (1), July/August/September 2012

For the bookshelf

Ken Taylor and Jane Lennon (eds) Managing
Cultural Landscapes, Routledge, London and New
York, 20 1 2 (ISBN 97804 1 56722252): paperback,
396pp, RRP $57

Managing Cultural Landscapes is the seventh
edited volume in the series Key Issues in Cultural
Heritage (series editors William Logan and
Laurajane Smith). It comprises eighteen chapters
spread across four topic areas: the emergence
of cultural landscape contexts; managing Asia-
Pacific cultural landscapes; new applications;
and future challenges. While there is a focus
on outstanding heritage landscapes inscribed
on the UNESCO World Heritage List, there is
considerable discussion of ‘ordinary’ rural and
urban landscapes.

The book was launched in Canberra on
27 April 2012 by Howard Morphy (Professor of
Anthropology, Australian National University)
following a one-day professional update session on
Cultural landscapes: current issues and approaches in
international practice. The session and book launch
coincide with the twentieth anniversary of the
adoption of the Wirld Heritage categories of cultural
landscape, a landmark event in heritage practice.

In the language of World Heritage, gardens and
parklands are usually recognised as ‘designed
landscapes’ (landscapes that are designed and
intentionally created), rather than ‘organically
evolved landscapes’ (resulting from social,
economic, administrative, and/or religious
activities over time), or ‘associative landscapes’
(lands with powerful religious, artistic or cultural
associations). Managing Cultural Landscapes
makes it clear that gardens and parklands,
whether of individual, local, or global importance,
have values that simultaneously encompass each
of these categories.

That said, gardens per se are not a specific
focus of this book. Rather they permeate
the chapters, sometimes more directly (e.g..
Chapter 5 on the spiritual and philosophical
underpinnings of constructed shanshui gardens
in China), but mostly less explicitly. The
idea of garden is considered in the context of
meanings of landscape and ‘nature’, which can
blur distinctions between large constructed
garden landscapes (e.g.. West Lake, China)
and agricultural landscapes (e.g., rice terraces,
Philippines and Bali).

Much of the appeal
of this edited volume
derives from the
geographic spread
of the chapters and
the diverse cultural
backgrounds of the
authors. The Asia-
Pacific region is a
particular focus with
chapters on Indonesia,

China, Japan,

Philippines, Thailand,

Cambodia, India,
and Melanesia. The
cultural specificity
of the subject matter
provides insights into
the ways in which
the cosmologies of
past and present
cultures (e.g., Chinese
Confucianism and Daoism; sacred geographies of
Indian landscape; kinships of interconnectedness
between a Canadian Aboriginal community and
Great Bear Lake) are encoded in landscape.

Lor example, the way in which the layout
of the structures and plantings of a palace in
Yogyakarta, Java, manifests Hindu Javanese
cosmology, within which two sacred banyan trees
symbolise justice and protection by the king as
well as the male and female aspects of earth.

I highly recommend the book to those with
interest and experience in managing heritage
places and their landscape settings, whether
gardens, parklands, or otherwise. The book
provides a culturally diverse and global context
for thinking about heritage as process rather
than product and the implications this view
has for managing places. Managing Cultural
Landscapes from a garden history perspective
is stimulating because it implicitly questions
the concept of a garden and challenges us to
question what we want to keep and why and for
whom we want to keep it.

Steve Brown is a cultural heritage researcher with the
NSW government. He is an expert member of the
ICOMOS-IFLA International Scientific Committee on
Cultural Landscapes.

Australian Garden History, 24 (1), July/ August/September 2012

25

Australian tree ferns
hitting the roof in
nineteenth-century
Brussels

Love and Devotion:

from Persia and
beyond (Macmillan
Art Publishing:
$69.95) showcases
Persian, Mughal, and
Ottoman manuscripts
from the Bodleian
Libraries and related
works from the State
Library ofVictoria —
plant and garden
imagery abounds.

Detail of The youth and
the singing-girl’ (Lahore,
1595) Bodleian Library,
University of Oxford
(MS. Elliott 254, fol. 35v)

Recent releases

Denis Diagre-Vanderpelen, The Botanic Garden
of Brussels (1826-1912): reflection of a changing
nation. National Botanic Garden of Belgium,
Meise,20l I (ISBN 9789072619877): hardback,

3 I2pp, RRP €50 (www.br.fgov.be/)

There are relatively few English-language
histories of European gardens and the National
Botanic Garden of Brussels and author Denis
Diagre-Vanderpelen are to be congratulated for
this comprehensive illustrated work. Embracing
a time span, garden type, and changing national
identity that has many parallels to Australia,
Diagre’s narrative and analysis propels us through
issues of commerce and public good, colonial
relations (in Belgium’s case, with the Congo),
changing political and social mores, urbanisation,
and much more.

Lesley Harding and Kendra Morgan, Sunday's
Garden: growing He/de, The Miegunyah Press in
association with the Heide Museum of Modern
Art and the State Library ofVictoria, Carlton,
Vic., 20 1 2 (ISBN 9780522858761): hardback,
304pp, RRP $45

Eor half a century John and Sunday Reed
nurtured the creation of the garden and an
environment at Heide in which art and nature
were brought together, and lasting friendships
and fond memories of warm hospitality, hard
work, and wonderful food were forged. Sunday’s
Garden places Sunday Reed and the garden at the
centre of this exploration of the growth of Heide

as a place of inspiration and creativity, in a richly
illustrated and beautifully laid out volume that
we’ve grown accustomed to in recent Miegunyah
Press publications. The accompanying exhibition,
which runs until 14 October 2012, allows further
investigation of the people, the friendships, the
literature, the ideas, the labour and love which
coalesced in the shaping of Sunday’s garden.

www.heide.com.au

Richard Neville, Air JW Lewin: painter & naturalist,
NewSouth Publishing, Sydney, 2012 (ISBN
9781742233277): paperback, 272pp, RRP $39.99

Published to accompany the exhibition ‘Eewin:
wild art’ (SENSW until 27 May; NEA from
28 July), this is an accomplished appraisal of
the pioneering Australia natural history artist
John William Eewin (1770—1819) active in
Australia from 1800. As Mitchell Eibrarian and an
experienced author and curator, Richard Neville
is ideally placed to trace Eewin’s career in its
gritty colonial context, in the process allowing rich
glimpses of the artist’s botanical and topographical
output, a significant aspect of his oeuvre.

Barbara Santich, Bold Palates: Australia's
gastronomic heritage, Wakefield Press, Kent Town,
SA, 20 1 2 (ISBN 978 1 74305094 1 ): hardback,
336pp, RRP $49.95

AGHS members with long memories may
recall Barbara Santich talking on the history of
tomatoes at the Mount Gambier conference, and
here the foodie theme is broadened to its widest
extent in this very welcome historical overview of
Australian gastronomy. Plenty of meat and veg
here, leavened with intriguing excursions into
bush tucker, picnics, and the barbecue.

Paul Thompson, Austra/ian Planting Design, 2nd ed.,
CSIRO Publishing, Collingwood,Vic., 2012 (ISBN
9780643 1 070 1 4): paperback, 272pp, RRP $39.95

Ten years after the first edition (Eothian, 2002),
this new paperback edition of Australian Planting
Design guides its readers through all the stages of
designing a new garden using Australian plants,
in which the author sets down the aesthetic and
practical considerations which have informed
his own thinking and practice developed over
more than three decades as a landscape architect
working predominantly with Australian plants and
Australian landforms for inspiration.

26

Australian Garden History, 24 (1), July/August/September 2012

Dialogue

Gwen Ford (1941-2012)

In March this year, Gwen Ford, wife of celebrated
Australian landscape designer Gordon Ford
(1918—1999), passed away. Gwen collaborated
with Gordon in the writing and editing of his book
Gordon Ford: The Natural Australian Garden
(published in 1999). A splendid obituary by Arnold
Zable appeared in The Age on 30 April 2012, in
which he warmly describes Gwen as a ‘passionate
gardener, teacher, writer, and an inspiring friend
to many,’ ‘the “beating heart” of Eltham’. As well
as enthusiastically supporting the Australian Open
Garden Scheme, opening their garden Fulling
annually since 1987, both Gordon and Gwen (and
later just Gwen) continued the legacy of generous
mentorship to new generations of landseape
designers and historians that had charaeterised the
post-WWII era of landscape design in Melbourne
in which Gordon began his practice as a landseape
designer. For many years, students of designed
landscape history from RMIT and The University
of Melbourne were welcomed to experienee Fulling
as a complete space, in terms of its design and
philosophy — meandering, drawing, thinking — and
as a way of living. The richness of these experiences
was augmented through Gwen’s warm hospitality
(cups of tea, tea from a little wooden caddy) and
her candid and insightful conversation about the
garden and about life.

Websites for botanic garden histories

Professor Roger Cousens of the University of
Melbourne has over the past decade compiled
websites for several regional Victorian botanic
gardens, containing historical summaries and
reproductions of early photographs and plans.
Addresses vary, but links to websites for Creswick
(Park Uake), Kyneton, White Hills (Bendigo),
and Horsham Botanic Gardens can be found on
the AGHS website (see Useful Uinks). A search
engine should easily locate websites for Koroit,
Malmsbury, and Queen’s Park (Clunes) Botanic
Gardens.

Order of Australia awards

Many will have recognised names — both
celebrated and not so well known — in the
recent Queen’s Birthday Honours Fist, with
some of special interest to our readers ineluding
Simon Molesworth AO (distinguished service to
conservation and the environment, to heritage
preservation at national and international levels,
to the professions and natural resource sectors.

and to community health organisations), James
Broadbent AM (service to the preservation of
Australia’s built heritage through roles with the
New South Wales Branch of the National Trust
of Australia, and as an academie and researcher),
Alex George AM (service to eonservation and
the environment as a botanist, historian and
author, particularly in the area of Australian
flora, and through roles with national and
international professional organisations), and
Charlotte Webb OAM (service to the community,
particularly through the Southern Highlands
Botanic Gardens). Our congratulations go to all
those whose community service is so worthy of
recognition.

Innovation and celebration in the
back yard

Congratulations to members Gas Middlemis and
Peter Cuffley whose book Hung Out to Dry:
Gilbert Toyne’s classic Australian clothes hoist
(2009) has been turned into a play. Performed to
three packed-out showings as part of the National
Trust’s Heritage Festival, the performances took
place on a delightful late autumnal day in Toyne’s
own back yard in Geelong West, complete with
its intact drying court and patented clothes hoist
(1923 model). This was a celebration of local
garden heritage at its best.

Robert Fyfe Zacharin (1925-2012)

We note the recent passing of Robert Zacharin,
whose pioneering book Emigrant Eucalypts: gum
trees as exotics (MUP 1978) highlighted this
little-appreciated botanical diaspora. Armed
with camera and notebook, Zacharin’s medical
profession took him to many parts of the world
allowing first-hand observations of his unusual
subject, which Jim Willis noted as ‘a fine
contribution to eucalyptology’.

Guilfoyle in the Yarra Valley

Bouquets to writer and editor Helen Collier for
her research on two potential William Guilfoyle’s
landscapes in Victoria’s Yarra Valley, one his own
Healesville property Mount Yule, and the other
Banool, at Yarra Glen. Helen’s research was
recently published in the Yarra Valley and Ranges
Gountry Life magazine and is available for viewing
online or in print form.

justwords.com.au

Australian Garden History, 24 (1), July/ August/September 2012

27

ACiHS News

AGHS e-news launched

The first posting of the new national AGHS
e-news was sent in Mareh 2012. Containing a
brief summary of news and events, this is an ideal
way to stay in touch. If you have not received
your e-news, please contact our executive officer
with your email address.

32nd Annual General Meeting

The 32nd Annual General Meeting of the
Australian Garden History Society will be held
on Saturday 10 November 2012 at 8.30am at
The Mercure, 613 Main Road, Ballarat, Victoria.
Items to be included on the agenda should be
posted or emailed to the AGHS office. Branches
are asked to nominate their representative to the
National Management Committee and to inform
the Secretary, Lynne Walker (c/ — AGHS office)
by 21 September 2012.

There will be two vacancies for elected positions
on the National Management Committee this
year. Stuart Read and Janet Schapper have served
one term of three years and must stand down
but may choose to re-nominate for a further
three-year term. Nominations to the National
Management Committee open on 22 August
2012 and close on i October 2012. To obtain
a nomination form, contact the AGHS office,

(03) 9650 5043 or toll free 1800 678 446 or email
info@gardenhistorysociety.org.au

Elections offer an opportunity for members to
participate in the management of the Society.

Each year the National Management Committee
holds three face-to-face, full-day meetings
in Eebruary, June, and prior to the annual
conference. These meeting are interspersed with
three one-hour telephone link-up meetings in
April, August and December.

Elected members serve for a three-year term and
are eligible for re-election for a maximum of one
additional term. An allowance to alleviate travel
costs for the meetings in Sydney and Melbourne is
available if required.

Executive Officer appointment

The Society is pleased to announce that Phoebe
EaGerche-Wijsman has been appointed as
Executive Officer following the recent resignation
of Jackie Courmadias. Phoebe is a qualified
landscape architect, which included horticulture
studies at Burnley, and ran her own floristry

business for twenty years. She has worked for the
not-for-profit membership-based organisations,
the Australian Institute of Eandscape Architects
and the Australian Institute of Quantity Surveyors
(as its Victorian Chapter Secretariat where she
coordinated and managed their small offices).

More recently she has been a researcher for
ABC Gardening Australia. We look forward to
introducing and welcoming Phoebe at forthcoming
AGHS events.

Neglected designer honured

James Jones, a neglected figure of Australia’s
garden history, is featured in the third leg of ‘The
Garden of Ideas: an Australian Garden History
Society National Touring Exhibition’. The New
South Wales showing, at the Royal Botanic
Gardens Sydney, will feature exhibits from the
previous South Australian and Victorian showings,
refreshed with treasures from the Sydney Botanic
Gardens collection, including books and diaries
of Jones, who worked in the gardens of Paris in
the 1 8 bos before his lengthy career in NSW as
lieutenant to Charles Moore and J.H. Maiden.
‘The Garden of Ideas’ is open during office
hours at the Red Box Gallery (enter from Mrs
Macquaries Road) from 13 July to 30 November
2012. A comprehensive of programme of lectures,
seminars, and other events will accompany the
exhibition (see Diary Dates for more details).

Lake Burley Griffin war memorials

In late Eebruary 2012 the AGHS’s advocacy
rejecting the proposed WWI and WWII
memorials on the shores of Eake Burley Griffin
in Canberra was rewarded with the withdrawal
of the proposal to build beside the lake, thus
preserving this significant cultural landscape
from its most recent threat.

Journal packing

Thanks to the following members who assisted our
hard-working Executive Officer, Jackie Courmadias,
and Janet Armstrong with the packing of Volume 23
of the journal: Beryl Black, Helen Botham, Mary
Chapman, ^^bndy Dwyer, Di Ellerton, Mai and
Eran Eaul, Jane Johnson, Pamela Jellie, John and
Beverley Joyce, Rosemary Kiellerup, Marian
Eetcher, Eaura Eewis, Anna Eong, Ann Miller,

Ann Rayment, Susan Reidy, Sandra and John
Torpey, Kathy Wright, Georgina Whitehead, Marie
Walpole, Virginia Wingett, and Pera Wells.

28

Australian Garden History, 24 (1), July/August/September 2012

Jackie Courmadias

Reading through Visions and Voices: The
Australian Garden History Society 1980-2005
this morning looking for the inspiration for words
that can do justice to the twenty years that
Jackie Courmadias has been the front face of the
Australian Garden History Society, I found just
what I had been searching for.

With fire crackling in the grate and wonderful
ABC FM music filtering in through the frost
hardened windows, I was so pleased to read the
words that had been swirling in my subconscious
since the day Jackie told the National
Management Committee she was resigning.

The Executive Officer is the glue
that binds everything together.

In Jackie Courmadias the Society
has a treasure.

Jackie’s calm, gentle, kind demeanour, her
generous smile, sense of humour and warm irony,
her attention to detail, diplomacy, unruffled
nature and presence has been the lynch pin of
the Society.

Jackie joined the Society twenty-one years ago
and recalls a little flyer falling out of one of the
journals in that first year of membership with a
‘position vacant’. Whatever was in that initial
position brief, was a far cry from what Jackie
has carried out over recent years as the Society
has taken on a web presence, a more strident
advocacy role, and expanded its horizons on all
fronts.

I recall first meeting Jackie at my first National
Management meeting in Melbourne, for we
both joined the Society at the same time and
my first meeting coincided with Jackie taking
on her role with the Society. And a year later,
sitting at the back of the bus with visiting English
speaker Ethne Clarke, Richard Aitken, and
others, winding our way through the midlands of
Tasmania during the Hobart Conference — both
Jackie and I away for a fleeting moment from
the responsibility of young families — I remember
sharing our love of literature, music, gardens, and
life, forming the basis of an enduring frendship.

The following year, in spring 1994, we took our
first tour, looking at the gardens of Edna Walling
in Victoria. So green were we, with enthusiasm
greatly outweighing experience, off we set from

Photo Trisha Burkitt

the Royal Botanic Gardens in Melbourne, where
the National Management Committee Chairman,
Margaret Darling had come to wave us off.
Starting the tour with a look at the Margaret
Stones exhibition in the Herbarium, we climbed
on the bus, and were just about to blithely sail off
when out from behind a tree came one of our tour
members.

We became meticulous counters of heads after
that! And did return all 50 delegates! The
following autumn we took those on the waiting
list on the same tour, followed by many more
happy tours where we have had the joy of getting
to know so many of our members. Jackie always
so meticulous in her attention to detail, coupled
with her warm, caring nature, making everyone
feel special.

The Society may be losing Jackie as their
Executive Officer, but we won’t be losing her as a
member or friend. I know I speak for all members
when I say how warmly we will look forward to
seeing Jackie at future AGHS events over the
years ahead.

We have been privileged indeed.

Trisha Burkitt

Australian Garden History, 24 (1), July/ August/September 2012

29

Howard Tanner

Monaro landscape:
clouds heavy with
moisture and volcanic
basalt lakes full to
overflowing.
Photo:Trisha Burkitt

Curry Flat, Nimmitabel,
set amongst established
trees in a sheltered fold
of the wide Monaro
plains, with the Snowy
Mountains in the
distance.
Photo Howard Tanner

Monaro gardens:

AGHS Autumn Tour, 23-27 April 2012

The Monaro landscape imprints itself indelibly on
one’s mind: expansive grassy plains, often treeless;
the folds of the land accented with upright poplars
and weeping willows, golden in autumn; and the
wide horizon edged by mountains to the west,
snow-capped in winter. For Patrick White — once
a jackaroo in these parts — it became symbolic of a
bleak youthful rural experience, set amongst frost-
hardened paddocks against grey/blue skies, which
found expression in his novel The Twyborn Affair.

Granite and basalt underlie the terrain: the
basalt areas are typically without trees, while the
granite country has rounded rocky outcrops and
scattered eucalypts. After good rain, shallow oval
lakes dot the countryside, but drought is a regular
occurrence. The land was taken up for grazing
in the 1830s, with Cooma as the regional centre.

The early settlers took their flocks and herds up
into the alpine meadows in summer, allowing their
own pastures to regenerate.

Severn Park’s Charles Massy — author, grazier,
and historian — spoke to us of the need to move
beyond European notions of farming in Australia,
to anticipate dry conditions, and to use native
grasses and methods such as cell grazing to
achieve sustainable agriculture.

In 1980 Rockybah, Nimmitabel, was a completely
barren landscape about a small cottage. Not a
place for a faint-hearted gardener, but Annie
Charles met the challenge, culling countless rocks
to make walls and a ha-ha, and to achieve pockets
of better ground. She has created a fine garden of
hardy plants.

30

Australian Garden History, 24 (1), July/August/September 2012

While shelter from prevailing winds is vital,
newer gardens have managed a carefully oriented
outlook into the broader landscape. At Erindale,
Nimmitabel, the garden provides a panorama
of the heroic Australian landscape of the Tom
Groggin Valley.

The oldest homestead (1830s) visited was Trisha
(Dixon) Burkitt’s Bobundara, Cooma, the whole
place an inspiration for her book Under the Spell
of the Ages. Set in a valley alongside a fast-flowing
stream, glades of ancient English and Wych elms
and dark pines frame vistas to simple sculptures.
Perennial borders edge the house, and at its rear is
a traditional box-edged flower-filled parterre.

Next in age was the basalt homestead (1850s)
at Myalla, Cooma. Mature trees line its drive
and enfold the garden, which is wonderfully
understated, with generous lawns leading the eye
towards a lake, and open country beyond. Old
grape vines, russet-red in autumn, overhang dark
walls of random stone.

The prosperity of the Edwardian era is well
conveyed through the 1900s— 20s issues of
The Pastoral Review, of rural properties grandly
improved and imparting dynastic aspirations. The
Cooma architect CD Cochran (active c. 1900— 30)
designed a number of substantial homesteads in
the district — Springwell, Curry Elat, Hazeldean,
Woodstock, among them. Typically single-storeyed,
wide verandahs encompass three sides, originally
overlooking elaborate hedge-bordered gardens.

All the gardens visited have been adapted to
suit modern times and less paid help. At Shirley,
Nimmitabel, the owners propose a large acreage of
contemporary parkland designed by Myles Baldwin
— it will be fascinating to watch this evolve.

To begin and conclude the tour, we visited two
gardens closer to Canberra: Eambrigg, Tharwa,
with its beautiful vista over a formal garden
to the (currently) wide Murrumbidgee; and
Micalago Station, Michelago, with its charming
ensemble of pavilions and courtyards, artfully
embellished after World War Two by Professor
Eeslie Wilkinson and Elizabeth Ryrie, the present
owner’s mother.

We noted some distinctive plants along the way.
The Burnet or Scotch rose (Rosa spinosissima
‘AndrewsiP), capable of forming a wonderful low
hedge, has petite pink flowers, and compact foliage
turning purplish-red in autumn; the Snowberry
(Symphoricarpos albus), a bush related the
honeysuckle family with white fruits; the Spindle
Berry (Euonymus europaeus), a shrub with vivid

Continued page 34

y .1 ^ ■: cr

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Discoveries

V\/hether you are an avid horticulturist
or simply love ‘smelling the roses’

Garden Tour of North India

with Ritu Sharma

DELHI • RAJASTHAN • AGRA • SHIMLA
1 5 February - 07 March 20 1 3

From the great Mughal Gardens of Delhi to the forests of
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botanical highlights of North India.

Landscapes of China

with Fiona Ogilvie

YUNNAN • SZECHUAN • GUANGXI
24 March - 1 4 April 20 1 3

Explore some of China’s most beautiful, varied and
remote natural landscapes. Learn the fascinating history
of Chinese gardening and visit ancient temple gardens,
botanic gardens and national parks.

Renaissance

Tours

For detailed information call 1300 727 095
or visit www.renaissancetours.com.au

Australian Garden History, 24 (1), July/ August/September 2012

31

Profile: Laurel Cheetham

Laurel Cheetham chairs the Southern
Highlands Branch of the AGHS and,
since January 201 1 , has been Branch
representative on the National Management
Committee. She is the AGHS representative
on Wingecarribee Council's Heritage
Advisory Group and a member of other
local and regional committees concerned
with planning matters.

I can trace my interest in landscape to my
childhood, and numerous family holidays around
eastern Australia. I was always keen to see how
landscapes changed, only later on understanding
the influences on what I was seeing. Studies
in geography, geomorphology, and geology at
school and at Sydney University provided insight
into landform and social history aspects of this
understanding. An appreciation of landscaping
came with post-graduate studies in landscape
architecture and town planning, also completed at
Sydney University in 1969.

My interest in heritage started when I worked with
Helen Proudfoot and other historians at the NSW
State Planning Authority in the early 1970s, and
increased greatly when supervising the preparation
of the Macarthur Heritage Study in the 1980s. I
have sinee been involved in numerous landscape
and heritage studies ineluding in the Wollongong,
Kiama, Camden, and Wollondilly Council areas.

As a town planner with the NSW State Planning
Department I worked on several large projeets
requiring an appreciation for landscape and on
many smaller ones where innovative approaehes
were called for to protect vistas and view corridors.
As part of investigations into the future urban
potential of areas like South Creek Valley and
Macarthur South on Sydney’s rural urban fringe,

I commissioned studies
to identify significant
landscapes and ways that
their significance could
be enhanced in a context
of change. I worked with
relevant councils to plan
for the protection of views
of vegetated ridgelines
such as Razorback near
Picton and the Kurrajong
Hills in the Blue
Mountains, and visual

corridors between important historic sites (such as
Rouse Hill and Bella Vista) and historic settings
and plantings on properties sueh as Harrington
Park and Camden Park.

The most exciting period of my career began in
1993 with the decision of the IOC to hold the
2000 Olympic Games in Sydney. My first task
was to finalise a regional plan for Homebush Bay,
then begin working on new legislation to enable
all Olympic Games projects to be properly and
transparently assessed within a limited timeframe.
I then managed a team in the assessment of
projects as diverse as a new railway line and
road network, an equestrian centre, the Olympic
stadium, and Olympic villages.

Planning has taught me to take a practical
and realistic approach to conservation and
development, to identify all issues, and then
prioritise them. The planner is sometimes seen
as the ‘bad guy’, because of decisions they must
make which require eompromise on the part of
those involved.

Planning has taught me to
take a practical and realistic
approach to conservation and
development, to identify all
issues and then prioritise them

My involvement with the AGHS really started
when I retired from the NSW Department of
Planning in 2008. I joined the Committee of the
Southern Highlands Branch at the end of that
year and became its Projeet Officer. I had lots of
ideas. However, time and resources are limited in
a volunteer organisation, and I’ve had to put some
of my more ambitious ideas on hold. Our Branch
has almost completed the reeording of Claude
Crowe’s Berrima Bridge Nursery and investigation
of its significance on the landseape of the Southern
Highlands, and has eommenced reeording the
Summerlees garden. We are also propagating
plants, including some rare camellias found in the
Crowe nursery, and, over the next year hope to
prepare a booklet on Southern Highlands gardens
for individual and group visits. Working with the
members of this Committee has broadened my
knowledge in so many ways and further increased
my interest in landscape and garden history.

32

Australian Garden History, 24 (1), July/August/September 2012

pi ary dates

JULY 2012

Tuesday 10

Winter lecture

VICTORIA

Dr Gwen Pascoe on ‘Guilfoyle’s Inheritance and Legacy: changes to public botany in Victoria 1850-1910’. 6pm, Mueller Hall,
The Herbarium, Birdwood Avenue, South Yarra. Gost: $15 members, $20 non-members, $10 students. Enquiries to Anne Vale,

heriscapes@aussiebb.com.au

Thursday 19

'The Regent's Park Circle: Charles Moore & Michael Guilfoyle'

SYDNEY & NORTHERN NSW

Exhibition curator and author Richard Aitken will give an illustrated introduction to The Garden of Ideas exhibition and a detailed
case study (based on previously unpublished research) on the early careers of Gharles Moore & Michael Guilfoyle. Gost: $30
RBG Friends/ AGHS members, $40 guests. 5.30pm for 6-7.30pm, Australian Museum Theatrette (entry via William Street).
Bookings essential, (02) 923 I 8 1 82 or email friends@rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au

Thursday 19

The Remembrance Driveway

ACT/RIVERINA/MONARO

Chris and Margaret Betteridge from Musecape Pty Ltd (Heritage Consultants) will give this lecture on the Remembrance
Driveway — A Living Memorial from Sydney and Canberra. 6pm, National Museum of Australia.

Friday 20 ^ The Garden of Ideas guided exhibition viewings SYDNEY & NORTHERN NSW

Join curator Richard Aitken to learn aboutThe Garden of Ideas exhibition and book. Tours of 45 minutes starting at 10.30am,

I 1 .30am, 2pm, 3pm, Red Box Gallery, National Herbarium Building, Royal Botanic Garden, Sydney (entry off Mrs Macquarie’s
Road, near the Woolloomooloo Gates). Cost: Free entry for AGHS/HHT member participants attending Saturday 21 July
study day. Numbers are limited and bookings essential, (02) 9997 5995 or email Jeanne@Villani.com

Saturday 21

'Grit & glamour: new stories for garden history'

SYDNEY & NORTHERN NSW

An AGHS/Historic Houses Trust members’ study day on early-mid 20th century horticulture and garden-making. Speakers include
Silas Clifford-Smith, Megan Martin, Chris Webb and Charlotte Webb, Stuart Read, Michael Lech, and Richard Aitken. 1 0-1 2.30pm,

1 .30-4pm,The Mint, Macquarie Street, Sydney - auditorium, Caroline Simpson Library and Research Centre, HHT Members’ Lounge.
Cost: $79 members, $89 non-members, includes seminary lunch, and free attendance at The Garden of Ideas walk on previous
day (July 20 event). Numbers are limited and bookings essential: HHT Members office (02) 8239 2266/members@hht. net.au or
AGHS (02) 9997 5995/ Jeanne@Villani.com

Sunday 22

Rosser garden, Gold Coast

Excursion to the Rosser Garden on the Gold Coast. See Branch webpage for full details.

QUEENSLAND

Sunday 29

Avenues of Honour talk and AGM

TASMANIA

Adrian Howard will speak about the surprising number of these avenues in Tasmania and the immense work undertaken to
document and record them. Venue: the historic Victoria Inn, Tunbridge. See Branch webpage for details.

AUGUST 2012

Wednesday 8

The Garden of Ideas Study Day: 'Becoming a garden detective'

SYDNEY

Learn skills and resources useful to any budding garden historian in an interactive event combining a guided visit to the Palace
Garden, talks by knowledgeable garden researchers, and guided visits to the library of the Royal Australian Historical Society. A joint
AGHS/RAHS members’ event. Cost: $45 RAHS & AGHS members, $55 non-members, includes handout notes, references, morning
tea. 1 0am- 1 pm. History House, I 33 Macquarie Street, Sydney. Numbers are limited and bookings essential: (02) 9264 278 1 or email
info@weasydney.nsw.gov.au or use the WEA website www.weasydney.nsw.edu.au to book. More details on the Branch webpage.

Sunday 12

'New tricks for an old garden' and AGM

SOUTHERN HIGHLANDS

Guest speaker^ Michael McCoy, will give a talk followed by lunch and a visit to Golden Vale historic garden. Cost: $35 members/
guests. Enquiries to Lynette Esdaile on (02) 4887 7122.

Australian Garden History, 24 (1), July/ August/September 2012

33

Thursday 16

'Nursery tales for a garden city' and ACM

ACT/RIVERINA/MONARO

Dr Lenore Coltheart, well-known Canberra-based historian and active in recent moves to conserve the ACT’s landscape heritage
will present this year’s annual lecture. 5.30pm, National Museum of Australia

Thursday 16

Winter lecture and ACM

VICTORIA

Janet O’Hehir on the planting palette of William Guilfoyle. 6pm, Mueller Hall, Herbarium, Birdwood Avenue, South Yarra.
Cost: $ 1 5 members, $20 non-members, $ 1 0 students. Enquiries to Anne Vale heriscapes@aussiebb.com.au

Thursday 16

'Who does my garden grow?'

SYDNEY & NORTHERN NSW

Historian and author James Broadbent on the people behind the plants we commonly grow or find in many gardens, stories that
bring plants alive, allow armchair travel, explain botany, tease out history, and unlock foreign languages. See Branch webpage for
more details.

Thursday 23

The Garden of Ideas

TASMANIA

An evening talk in Hobart with author Richard Aitken based on his most recent book The Garden of Ideas. Details to be advised.

Sunday 26 Heritage roses and ACM QUEENSEAND

The Branch ACM will be followed by a presentation on heritage roses by Jenny O’Brien-Lutton. Venue: Herbarium, Brisbane Botanic
Gardens, Mount Coot-tha. See Branch webpage for more details.

SEPTEMBER 2012

Friday 14 | 'Charles Moore and Joseph Maiden: outreach and impact' SYDNEY & NORTHERN NSW

Colleen Morris on the contribution and influence of Moore and Maiden, long-term Sydney Botanic Gardens directors, on NSW
parks, streetscapes, and public building reserves. See Branch webpage for more details.

Wednesday 19-Thursday 20

Guilfoyle inspired tour

VICTORIA

Two-day Western District tour including private and public gardens in the Birregurra, Colac, Camperdown, and Warrnambool
districts, staying overnight in Camperdown. Cost: approximately $320 includes coach travel, dinner accommodation, morning and
afternoon teas, lunches, and garden entries. Full itinerary and booking details July Branch newsletter Enquiries to Pamela Jellie on

pdjellie@hotmail.com

OCTOBER 2012

Friday 26

Braidwood, Lake Bathurst, Goulburn self-drive tour

SOUTHERN HIGHEANDS

Visit historic Palerang and Bongalabi, and modern Terry Hie. Cost: $25 members/guests. 10. 15am start. Morning tea will be
provided by the committee. Enquiries to Lynette Esdaile on (02) 4887 712.

NOVEMBER 2012

Friday 9-Sunday 11

AGHS Annual National Conference, Ballarat, Victoria

The Australian Garden History Society’s 33rd Annual National Conference will be held in Ballarat in late Spring, 9-1 I November 20 1 2.

From page 31

red berries opening to reveal orange seeds; and
40-metre tall Canadian poplars. The exposed
hilltop at Willawa, JMoonbah, brought together
lichen-covered granite boulders and snowgums,
with silver-grey shrubs and borders, and sweeps of
miniature mauve chrysanthemums.

The tour was infused with Trisha Burkitt’s love
of JMonaro, its people and places, and the capable
management of Jackie Courmadias.

Howard Tanner is a Sydney architect, and a founding
member of the AGHS.

34

Australian Garden History, 24 (1), July/August/September 2012

'Capturing Flora: 300 years of Australian
botanical art' at the Art Gallery of Ballarat

Gordon Morrison

I have always had a great interest in botanical art and
an enormous admiration for the artists who have chosen
this demanding path. The first work I acquired for this
Gallery back in 2004 was a New Caledonian Passiflora
painted by the great Margaret Stones. However the
scope of Ballarat’s exhibition ‘Capturing Flora’ could
have been quite different to what we eventually
focussed upon. We might have gone for a more general
survey of images representing plants across the world
over a much wider time frame. We could have started
with Gerard and Besler and shown a sampling of some
of the great images that can be sourced from collections
in Australia today.

Two factors pushed us towards a more focussed show.
The first was the collecting policy of the Art Gallery
of Ballarat, which since the 1960s has focussed on
work by Australian artists or art that depicts Australian
subject matter. Since 1949 our collection has included
William Dampier’s book Voyage to New Holland that
includes the very first prints of plants collected on this
continent — in 1699. We also possess a very fine drawing
by Margaret Stones of Acacia alata, donated to the
gallery in 1955. However, images of the Australian flora
were not prominent in the collection and this had been

noted twenty years ago in a review of our collecting
policy as an area needing attention. In the process of
preparing for this exhibition, this ‘hole’ in the collection
has been well and truly filled.

In 2008 I found Helen Hewson’s 1999 monograph
Australia: 300 years of botanical illustration in a
second-hand book shop. While reading this work the
penny dropped. Not only could Hewson’s book be used
as a guide for acquiring images, since it had never been
associated with an exhibition it was clearly a wonderful
opportunity to utilise it as a blueprint for a major show.

Hewson’s work concludes at the end of the twentieth
century. We now have another twelve exciting years
of contemporary botanical art practice to explore and
celebrate. In common with Hewson’s book the show will
be a journey in time and across space. In terms of pure
chronology it covers images made from 1704 to 2012. In
terms of geography we will feature genera from all states
and territories not to mention a few ring-ins from some of
our closest neighbours in Old Gondwana.

Just fifty years ago the cultivation of native plants
(beyond perhaps a few showy specimens) was regarded
as a little eccentric, or even something that hinted

Gordon Morrison (Director) and Anne Rowland (Registrar) with botanical prints, Art Gallery of Ballarat.

Australian Garden History, 23 (4), July/ August/September 2012

35

Passiflora ouront/'o, the Norfolk Island passion-flower was introduced to England in 1792 and first raised by Lee and Kennedy at their Vineyard
Nursery, Hammersmith. This illustration was published in Henry Andrews, The Botanist's Repository, Vol. 5, 1804, pi. 295 (plate dated I May 1803).

of left wing tendencies on the part of the gardener.
When in the seventies the movement for growing
indigenous plants gathered momentum it was still
regarded by many as the preserve of people with beards
who lived in mud brick houses on our urban fringes.
Preparing for this exhibition has made me realise that
for a sustained period of time in the first half of the
nineteenth century, the new-found Australian plants
enjoyed a considerable vogue in Europe. They may
have been confined to greenhouses and conservatories
in northern parts, but were readily adopted by
gardeners enjoying Mediterranean climes.

A strength of the exhibition will be the wealth of
images from horticultural magazines and catalogues
of botanic garden collections in the Britain, France,
Belgium, and Germany. Dating from i8oo to the
last quarter of the nineteenth century, these are also
interesting from the perspective of printing techniques.
The older works are mostly hand coloured etchings but
the later images are splendid examples of early colour
lithography. Many are spectacular in spite of their
modest size.

Another aim of the exhibition will be to celebrate
the work of some great artists who have never been
properly appreciated. While most people have heard of
Ellis Rowan, Rosa Fiveash is not exactly a household

name. Almost no-one has heard of the tragic Friedrich
Schoenfeld. This Swiss-born artist illustrated many of
Ferdinand Mueller’s works in the i86os. Of this now
obscure artist Hewson wrote: ‘Even in the international
context, Schoenfeld’s work is superior to that of
contemporaries, Fitch included ... Schoenfeld was a
master.’ Yet poverty and lack of recognition drove him
to commit suicide in 1867 — a huge loss to Australian
botanical art.

The exhibition will feature more that 400 works. It
needs to be large because the scope is ambitious and
comprehensive, covering ground that has not been
treated in depth in previous exhibitions. There will
also be a lavishly illustrated catalogue with essays from
a range of scholars on topics such as the horticultural
use of the Australian flora in the nineteenth century,
amateur and professional ‘lady artists’, and a review
of the first Australian published floras, from the
perspective of the printing technologies used in their
illustration. There will be much to enjoy and celebrate.

Gordon Morrison is Director of the Art Gallery of
Ballarat and the principal curator of ‘Capturing Flora: 300
years of Australian botanical art’. The exhibition runs from
25 September to 2 December 2012 and is to be accompanied
by a major new book on the subject.

AUSTRALIAN

GARDEN

HISTORY

SOCIETY

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

Collection: Art Gallery of Ballarat (purchased with funds from the Hilton White Bequest, 20 1 2)