Australian garden history : journal of the Australian Garden History Society

HISTORY

Snippets

200th anniversary of Joseph Hooker’s birth

Portrait of Sir Joseph
Hooker, Director,
Kew Gardens, byTH
Maguire, 1851.

Allport Library and
Museum, Hobart

Margaret Hope
watercolour of
blue-flowered
Scoevola hookeh
with Caladenia
pu/cherrima. Many
plant names,
including that
of the scaevola,
commemorate the
botanists William
and Joseph Hooker.

Watercolour
in Hope album,
published in 2015
by the Allport
Library and
Museum, Hobart,
as Character of the
blossom: wildfowers
of Tasmania by
Margaret Hope
1848-1934.

The 200th anniversary of the birth of botanist
Joseph Dalton Hooker occurred on 27 June
I 817, a bicentenary marked with offerings
as different as a virtual Himalayan trek and a
weekend of celebrations at the Royal Botanic
Gardens, Kew.

Hooker’s connection with Kew was profound.
He succeeded his father William Hooker as
director of the gardens in I 865. Both father
and son were distinguished botanists. Joseph
Hooker’s appointment as director was a
rare example, as Wikipedia notes, of‘an
outstanding man succeeded in his post by an
equally outstanding son’.

Both were also keen travellers. Joseph Hooker
sailed with James Clark Ross’s I 839-1 843
expedition as assistant surgeon and naturalist
on the Erebus. As well as exploring Antarctica,
Ross’s expedition visited New Zealand,
touched briefly at Sydney’s Port Jackson,
and had two extended stays in Tasmania
('Van Diemen’s Land).

With geologist Charles Lyell, Joseph Hooker
supported the papers of Alfred Russel Wallace
and Charles Darwin on the mutability of
species when these were Jointly presented to
the Linnean Society of London in I 858.

An understanding of the botanical world is
fundamental to human survival. Many might
think of Hooker’s time as representing the great
age of exploration and discovery of new plant
species, and see the pursuit as something largely
belonging to the past. Nevertheless, some
2000 new plant species are still identified every
year Alistair Watt’s article ‘Modern-day plant
hunting’ in the April 2017 issue of Australian
Garden History testifies that the excitement and
productivity of exploring for plants continues -
or has done until very recent days.

Sources

Winifred M Curtis (1972) ‘Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker
(I 817-19 I I)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography
vol 4, Melbourne University Press.

KJ Willis, ed (2017) State of the world’s plants 20 17.
Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
(available free online).

Cover (detail) View from the old cottage of the garden at Horse Island.
Howard Tanner's feature review of Horse Island by Christina Kennedy
starts on p 9.

photo Jason Busch

Australian Garden History 29 (1) July 2017

Editorial

Bernadette Hi nee

Our winter issue of Australian Garden
History begins with two bloekbuster
feature reviews. Heritage eonsultant
Chris Betteridge leads off with his review
of Gardens of history and imagination:
growing New South Wales. This
notable eolleetion of essays, edited by
Gretehen Poiner and Sybil Jaek (who
have eontributed essays themselves), is
eo-published by Sydney University Press
and the NSW Chapter of the Independent
Seholars Assoeiation of Australia, with
generous support from the Australian Garden History Soeiety (Kindred Spirits
Fund) and other supporters.

Sydney arehiteet Howard Tanner, a founder of the Soeiety with a longstanding
interest in Australian landseape design and history, reviews Horse Island, Christina
Kennedy’s story of her sensational garden on the south eoast of New South Wales.
The book is beautifully illustrated with Jason Buseh’s photography.

Various delights follow, ineluding the poem ‘In Mr Glover’s summer garden’,
by Jeff Brownrigg, in whieh Betty Chureher walks with John Glover through a
painting of his home and garden at Mills Plain, Van Diemen’s Land.

Maria Hiteheoek deseribes an AGHS exeursion to find another painter, Tom Roberts
— or more preeisely, to find the grass trees near Inverell in northern NSW whieh
featured in Roberts’ painting ‘Bailed up’. Tim Gatehouse visits a garden in Ireland
with probable Australian links, and the man behind Hamilton Gardens, Peter Sergei,
gives us the story of these NZ gardens. John Leslie Dowe, a speeialist in Areeaeeae
(palms), eommemorates an ornamental fountain in the Brisbane Botanie Gardens,
and seientist Anne Coehrane explains seed banks.

The Australian Garden History Soeiety would like to take this opportunity to
aeknowledge the work and eommitment of landseape arehiteet and hortieulturalist
Phoebe LaGerehe-Wijsman, who has now moved on after five years as our national
exeeutive offieer. Her qualifieations in arehiteeture and landseape arehiteeture
eombined with soeial media, eleetronie eommunieation and management skills
were invaluable. (A profile of Phoebe was featured in Australian Garden History
in Oetober 2012.) We wish Phoebe all sueeess.

The Soeiety weleomes the appointment of the new national exeeutive offieer,
Robyn Robins. Her experienee in marketing, management and the tertiary
edueation seetor, and with the Friends of the Botanie Gardens, and her enthusiasm
for hortieulture, garden history and knowledge of New Zealand (where her father
was a noted amateur rose breeder), dovetail well with the Soeiety. Robyn was
appointed in April 2017, joining Georgina Ponee de Leon in the Melbourne offiee
to make a talented small team. We are delighted to weleome Robyn! She will be
our featured ‘Profile’ in the Oetober 2017 issue of Australian Garden History.

Contents

4 A cornucopia of New South
Wales garden history

Chris Betteridge

9 Christina's garden

Howard Tanner

13 The grass trees of Paradise Creek

Maria Hitchcock

15 Larchill: a rediscovered Irish
garden

Tim Gatehouse

21 In Mr Glover's summer garden

Jeff Brownrigg

23 NZ's Hamilton Gardens

Peter Sergei

25 In memory of an ornamental
fountain

John Leslie Dowe

28 Saving seeds: conserving our
natural heritage

Anne Cochrane

31 For the bookshelf

32 ACM notice and AGHS News

33 Dialogue, Exhibitions

34 Diary dates

35 AGHS organisational and
publication details

36 'Marvellous Melbourne' -
AGHS's2017

national conference

i IHI Mlt III

photo Kim Woods Rabbidge, 2017

Australian Garden History 29 (1) July 2017

A cornucopia of New South Wales
garden history

Carriageway, Retford
Park house. Evolving
from the gardenesque,
elements of the boom
style are evident in
the garden.

Mitchell Library Hordern
family photographic
albums cl 865-1925

Last year marked the bicentenary of
Sydney's Royal Botanic Gardens and the
300th anniversary of the birth of Capability
Brown. It was fitting that these momentous
events were celebrated with some
wonderful publications and exhibitions
about the philosophy and history of gardens
and gardening. Of the books, one of the
best is Gardens of history and imagination:
growing New South Wales.

Gardens of history and imagination collects ten
essays by some of this country’s foremost experts
in historical research, landscape architecture,
plant ecology, garden history, anthropology,
sociology, photography and horticulture. Edited
by Gretchen Poiner and Sybil Jack, the book is
co-published by Sydney University Press and
the NSW Chapter of the Independent Scholars
Association of Australia, with generous support
from the Australian Garden History Society
(Kindred Spirits Fund), the City of Sydney, the
Nursery and Garden Industry Australia, the
Royal Botanic Gardens and the State Library of
NSW. Beautifully designed and finely illustrated
with more than 50 historical images sourced
from the State Library, Royal Botanic Gardens
and private collections, the essays are supported
by a bibliography that runs to 21 pages and a
comprehensive index.

With forewords by Brett Summerell, Richard
Neville and Robert Prince and an introduction by

Gretchen Poiner, the essays cover a particularly
wide range of topics on the human management
and manipulation of the Australian landscape,
from the first Australians’ understanding of
and care for country through the evolution of
gardening by non-Aboriginal settlers to the role of
gardens in health and science.

Anthropologist Gaynor Macdonald’s essay
‘Gardens, landscapes, wilderness: ways of seeing
ourselves’ looks at ways in which humans control
and humanise space. She contrasts the order out
of chaos created in the highly-stylised gardens
of Japan with ‘Aboriginal Australia: the most
humanised landscape in the world’. She concludes
that all gardens:

In different ways, emphasise the good life: health,
harmony and safety. How they do so varies from one
part of the world to another, and through time, but
because they do so they are a window onto how we
understand ourselves.

Gretchen Poiner, an anthropologist with a strong
interest in human connections to landscape, has
contributed ‘A sense of place’ which explores the
ways in which the creating and maintaining of
gardens help humans to develop a sense of place,
for gardens ‘are and were as much about people
as they are about plants’. Her essay contrasts the
evolution of the gardens of the early European
settlers in NSW, from necessity to pleasure with
the Chinese market gardens in Sydney suburbs
tended by those who toiled in the hope that
they would return to their ancestral homes.

The sometimes dynastic family burial plots on

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Australian Garden History 29 (1) July 2017

isolated rural properties are seen as affirming
‘unambiguously and into a foreseeable future an
enduring connection’ with place.

Sybil Jack, an authority on botanical history and
forest ecology, contributes ‘Garden elements:
seeds, plants and their sources in colonial New
South Wales’. She begins with:

I first saw how plants could be spread when helping
my grandmother in her back garden. She had a
passion for ferns and, wherever we went, if she saw a
fern she didn't have she would acquire a shoot - and
with her green fingers it always grew. After she left
that garden I wondered how they fared. When I came
to Australia I noticed how people visiting gardens,
opened occasionally to the public, surreptitiously
nipped a cutting while looking the other way. It spurred
my interest in how the once separate distribution of
botanical species in the different continents came to be
amalgamated.

Her essay covers early European plant arrivals in
Australia, the transport of native species back to
Britain and the continent, sources of information
on plants available to the early colonists including
nursery catalogues, and the role of nurserymen
in expanding the varieties of plants available to
gardeners — including improvement of stock through
hybridisation and the development of the nursery
industry and of special interest groups devoted to
particular forms such as camellias or orchids.

Janet George, specialist in pharmacy and
sociology, deals with ‘Cultivated wellbeing:
gardens and health in colonial New South Wales’.
She states:

It is a truism that the colony of New South Wales was
established at a significant time for botany and medicine,
with Enlightenment ideas of rationalism, classification and

the search for causation underpinning the excitement of
the'new'. By the time of settlement, plants from all over
the known world were included in European medicinal
gardens and formularies [pharmacopoeias].

The early European settlers relied on traditional
health remedies used since antiquity and brought
with them a ‘complex, hierarchic and contested
structure of medical practitioners’ inherited from
Great Britain. Increasing knowledge of health and
the causes of illnesses during the 19th century
was counterbalanced by quackery and self-
help approaches. The range of medicinal plants
available was endless but little use was initially
made of locally grown plants, with drugs imported
from Britain. Janet deals with the use of plants
to enhance the amenity of hospitals and mental
institutions and with research into Australian
plant species for their medicinal qualities,
including Joseph Maiden’s work on essential oils
at Sydney’s Technological, Industrial and Sanitary
Museum (now The Powerhouse). She concludes
that European settlers achieved wellbeing and
holistic health when and where possible by
‘bringing together garden elements both utilitarian
and decorative, traditional and exotic, negotiating
the security of the known with the attraction of
the new and different.’

Historian Ailsa McPherson’s essay ‘Exhibiting
gardening’ adopts the Oxford Dictionary definition
that a garden is ‘a piece of ground devoted to
growing flowers, fruit or vegetables’ but which
can also be ‘ornamental grounds for public resort’,
while horticulture is the art of cultivating same.
Within this frame, she explores the horticultural
societies and their exhibitions in Sydney from the
1830s to the 1870s.

Left: Gretchen Poiner
and Sybil Jack (eds)
Gardens of history and
imagination: growing
New South Wales,
Sydney University
Press in assoc with
NSW Chapter of
the Independent
Scholars Association
of Australia, RRP $60,
xxvi + 277 pp.

Right: Conrad
Martens,‘Rosebank,
Woolloomooloo, the
Residence of James
Laidley’, 1840.

Mitchell Library,

State Library of NSW

Gankfis jtmf Iff rngittn if aft

NhW SOUlM tVALcH

Australian Garden History 29 (1) July 2017

5

Completed
streetscape at
Daceyville Garden
Suburb, Sydney,
cl 9 I I. No longer will
‘free Australians ...
be herded together
in terraces of
mere dog-boxes’
(John Rowland Dacey,
Labor MLA, 1911).

Mitchell Library,
State Library of NSW

Social divisions in the colony between the
gentlemen settlers and the emancipated convicts
stifled the early development of societies
devoted to agricultural, pastoral and horticultural
interests, especially when Governor Macquarie
refused his patronage unless emancipists were
permitted to join, a concession the landed
gentry were unwilling to make. As the colony
matured, societies formed, starting with the
Agricultural Society of NSW, formed in 1822,
which expanded to include horticulture, but was
suspended in 1836 due to drought and depression.
This was followed by the Australian Floral and
Horticultural Society which began exhibitions
in 1838. The evolution of this society into the
Australasian Botanic and Horticultural Society
coincided with improvements at Sydney’s Botanic
Gardens under Charles Moore. As with many
societies, differences of opinion over policy and
direction eventually led to discontent and in 1862
14 members created a new ‘unpretentious’ group,
reflecting ‘co-operation between gardeners and
horticulturists’, the Horticultural Society of NSW.
Royal visits, intercolonial exhibitions and the 1879
International Exhibition are all covered.

Identified in the book as a horticulturist,
bureaucrat, educator and cultural landscapes tour
leader, Stuart Read is another contributor well
known to AGHS members. His essay ‘Riverine
gardens of Sydney waterways’ draws on Stuart’s
considerable knowledge of the historic cultural
landscapes of NSW. It deals with the early
productive gardens and vineyards along the
Parramatta River, including the Government
Farm in the Domain at Parramatta and the
Macarthurs’ Elizabeth Farm, prominently sited
harbourside gardens such as Elizabeth Bay
House, Henrietta Villa and Carrara, established

as aesthetic statements of social position, and
the gardens used by the public for recreation,
education and research, including Nielsen Park
at Vaucluse, Cremorne Gardens and Correys
Gardens and the adjoining Cabarita Park. Stuart’s
essay concludes with an investigation of gardens
associated with health care or private education
such as Callan Park and St Ignatius’ College,
Riverview. Many of these gardens are much
reduced in size and subject to ongoing threats,
most surviving ‘thanks to public protest and
lobbying’. The author questions their future
unless more is known about their past, their
design, their function and their meanings.

Academic historian John Ramsland examines the
development of the designed urban environment
in his essay ‘Garden suburbs for the people:
the movement from late nineteenth-century
New South Wales’. He traces the movement,
originating

from Ebenezer Howard's English doctrinal and analytical
tome of 1898, Tomorrow: A peaceful path to real reform,
in which he advanced the idea of garden cities/suburbs
as a vehicle of social revolution - of a peaceable nature -
towards a better and brighter future for civilisation.

Sydney’s remarkable growth from the 1880s led
to overcrowding and insanitary conditions in the
old-established inner suburbs such as The Rocks,
Darlinghurst, Woolloomooloo, Pyrmont and
Surry Hills, exacerbated by often poor quality
construction of housing. The bubonic plague
outbreak in 1901 led to reconstruction of
dwellings in The Rocks and Millers Point but
despite popular perceptions that the early
20th century was a time of ‘social reform’ and
‘humanistic liberalism’, Ramsland argues that
‘political corruption and opportunism and lack
of concern for working people’ led to a lack of
radical reform, with little or no consultation with
working people.

The essay uses the example of the NSW
government’s Daceyville Garden Suburb and
examines the politics that brought it about, its
evolution, what it was like to live there, the
development of gardens in the suburb and the
fact that the initial vision was never fully realised.
Daceyville is compared with nearby Matraville
Soldiers’ Garden Village for returned World War I
veterans and with the Griffins’ ‘utopia-esque’
landscaped ‘masterwork’ at Castlecrag and the
Australian Agricultural Company’s Hamilton
Estate near Newcastle. The author argues that
the last-mentioned has perhaps survived best.

Colleen Morris, a landscape heritage consultant
and stalwart of the Australian Garden History

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Australian Garden History 29 (1) July 2017

Hill End was a thriving
settlement in the
gold rush years, with
domestic gardens such
as this growing a wide
variety of vegetables,
herbaceous plants and
shrubs.

American and Australasian
Photographic Company,
Mitchell Library,

State Library of NSW

Society, has published widely on the garden
history of Sydney and NSW. Her essay ‘Planting
New South Wales: the role of the Sydney Botanic
Garden’ chronicles the significant and enduring
influence of Charles Moore and his staff and their
successors at the Gardens in the landscapes and
plantings of the Gardens and the Domain, the
grounds of offieial residences in Sydney and Moss
Vale, but also Hyde, Victoria, Wentworth and
Centennial Parks. This role was later expanded
to all public institutions. Colleen follows Moore’s
half century of influence in tree planting which
‘had become a sign of civic pride’, his advocacy for
‘re-foresting the country’ with timber trees grown
for their hardiness in the various areas of the state
and recommendation for the establishment of a
government nursery.

JH Maiden, Moore’s successor, was a prolific
botanical explorer, researcher, educator and author
who continued and expanded the distribution
of plants from the Sydney Gardens and the
Government Nursery to councils, churches,
hospital and individuals. The essay concludes
that ‘the role of the Royal Botanic Gardens of
Sydney in influeneing the horticultural tastes of
the community and the cultural landscapes of the
state over 200 years is of exceptional significance’.
It’s hard to argue with that.

Artist, book designer, photographer and
photographic historian Catherine Rogers not only
brought her considerable talent to the design and
layout of the book but also contributed an essay
‘Hollywood in Burwood: the transformation of
a suburban backyard to a garden’. The author
brings her passion for photography to bear on
the evolution of the Sydney suburb of Burwood
and particularly on Thomas Rowley’s 213 acre
Cheltenham Estate first advertised for sale in 1854.

One thousand handsome, coloured 'lithographic posters'
illustrated with local scenes and the artist's ideas of the
development's picturesque potential, were produced as
part of the advertising devoted to making this huge land
subdivision and sale a great event.

In a section titled ‘Gardens to backyards’,
Catherine discusses the political responses to
outbreaks of disease originating in small, poorly
maintained backyards with pools of contaminated
water, cesspits and piles of rotting garbage, leading
to the borough of Burwood endeavouring to bring
the municipality under the City Improvement Act,
so that

the evils which have been allowed to grow up in the city,
and which are now found to be exceedingly difficult to
remedy, will not be permitted to become established in
other parts of the metropolis.

Australian Garden History 29 (1) July 2017

7

The last part of the essay is devoted to the
property Hollywood, built in 1868—69, extended
in 1978 and given its name in 1872 by then owner
the Reverend George King after his first parish
in Hollywood, Ireland. The house and those who
lived there are described, including the ways
in which the function and use of the backyard
could change over time as improvements in
water supply and sanitation occurred. The author
concludes that

while remaining essentially as private space behind the
house, the suburban backyard could be re-imagined and
redesigned not simply as a place for quiet, aesthetic rest
but as the new (and contradictory) place for recreation -
as a pleasure garden.

The collection is rounded out by ‘The evolving
meanings of Retford Park; from the Horderns
to Fairfax, 1885 to the present’ by Sue Rosen,
historian and heritage consultant. Retford Park
at Bowral in the Southern Highlands of NSW
has been in the news lately due to the extremely
generous bequest of the property by the late
James Fairfax to the National Trust of Australia

Illustration showing
the range of produce
and prizes at the
I 869 Metropolitan
Intercolonial
Exhibition, Sydney.

I Colonial soap
trophy, 2 Colonial
sugar trophy, 3, Rustic
(Law Somner) shed,
with seed and floral
exhibits, 4 Portable
gas-works, 5 Western
Kerosene Co (blocks
of shale).

Mitchell Library,
State Library of NSVV

(NSW). Sue’s essay chronicles the development
of this highly significant estate under three
generations of the prominent Hordern family
between 1884 and 1964. The main house was
designed by Albert Bond in 1887 and extended in
1907 to a design by Morrow and de Putron, who
also designed the Hordern’s Art Nouveau mansion
Babworth at Darling Point.

The estate includes many other buildings —
a ‘former manager’s residence, cottages, stables,
a coach house and ancillary buildings, all
sitting comfortably in the park-like landscape
distinguished by avenue plantings, stands of
mature trees, and the use of hedges to create
garden rooms and compartments’. There are
numerous aviaries, an emu run and a donkey
enclosure and strong visual links to the
surrounding farmland.

Acquired with an overgrown garden and
neglected arboretum from King Ranch in 1964
by James Fairfax, initially as a weekend retreat,
Retford Park became Fairfax’s home in 1995.

He commissioned Melbourne architect Guilford
Bell to design the swimming pool and pavilion,
and engaged English landscape architect John
Codrington to ‘redo’ the grounds.

Sue provides considerable detail on the evolution
of the estate and the plantings which include
significant specimens and examples of work by
prominent garden designers.

If you are a professional landscape practitioner,
a garden historian, a heritage specialist, a keen
gardener or anyone interested in the history of our
cultural landscape, you will find plenty of interest
in this wonderful and very worthwhile addition to
the body of Australian garden history literature.
Whether you sit down and read it from cover
to cover or dip into at leisure you will be richly
rewarded. Those who delve into the bibliography
will want to rush to the State Library or the
Daniel Solander Library at the Botanic Gardens
and may be there for some time! The authors,
publishers and supporters are to be heartily
congratulated and AGHS members who have not
already acquired this book should do so at once.

Heritage consultant Chris Betteridge is qualified in
botany, museum studies and heritage conservation,
and has more than 30 years experience in the
investigation, assessment, management and
interpretation of the natural and cultural environment.
He has lectured and published widely on the
conservation of cultural landscapes including historic
gardens, parks and cemeteries.

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Australian Garden History 29 (1) July 2017

Howard Tanner

Christina's garden

The far South Coast of New South Wales
retains much of the simplicity of earlier
times. Here rugged mountains and forests of
tall-trunked trees come down close to the
coast, with the sea edged by beautiful lakes
and long sandy beaches.

A connection with history

For centuries the region was occupied by the Brinja
Yuin people, with the Terosse clan located around
Tuross Lakes. In the early days of European
settlement, the better timber was felled, and good
farming land cleared. Indeed the pattern of small
isolated colonial settlements dating from the 1840s
has largely survived to this day. Before modern
roads, access to significant markets was by coastal
shipping which had to weather the vicissitudes
of shallow river ports and wharves on exposed
headlands. The railway from Sydney reached

the edge of Nowra in 1888, and overland travel
to points further south involved a narrow road
winding its way to Bega and Eden. Inland towns
such as Cooma and Braidwood could be reached
via rough tracks over the steep coastal escarpment.

Thomas Sutcliffe Mort (1816—78) is one of
the great names of 19th century enterprise in
Australia. He was an exceptional and talented
individual — initially a merchant; then an
auctioneer, notably in wool; evolving into a
supplier of integrated financial services to
pastoralists. Sydney’s Mort’s Dock and his
refrigeration schemes (eventually the NSW Fresh
Food & Ice company) were landmark ventures.
He was a pioneer in many industries including
mining, railways, wool, dairy, sugar, silk and
cotton production.

In 1846 Mort purchased a property known
as Percyville, on Darling Point. In love with
the traditions of English Gothic architecture.

View from old
cottage.

photo Jason Busch

Australian Garden History 29 (1) July 2017

9

Top: Western view
from the big house.

Bottom: Rill from
the northern end.

photos Jason Busch

he pictured Darling Point as a Gothic village,
and facilitated the construction of a fine parish
church, St Mark’s. He transformed his land with
the construction of a handsome Gothic house,
which he named Greenoaks, and the creation of
a large and elaborate garden setting. Edmund
Blacket was the architect of the house — which
still sits on a bluff overlooking Double Bay and
Sydney Harbour — and nurseryman Michael
Guilfoyle implemented a 13-acre garden. Mort
and Guilfoyle both took a keen interest in the
promotion of horticulture, and plants and produce
from the garden won numerous prizes.

By the 1860s Mort had acquired and consolidated
14,000 acres of land on the South Coast of
New South Wales around the Tuross River and
its fertile river flats. Centred on the village of
Bodalla, this was to be a massive tenant-farmer
community producing fine cheese. At Comerang
he erected a large single-storeyed residence in a
fine garden setting. Within the village he intended
the construction of a grandly-towered stone

church (1880, designed by Edmund Blacket and
his sons) for the Anglican faith, and established
a dairy factory; later, his son’s wife was the
beneficiary of a fine shingle-clad Catholic chapel
(1886, designed by architect John Horbury Hunt).

On Thomas Mort’s death his children inherited
the Bodalla Estate. This continued as a major
dairying enterprise for more than one hundred
years, and over time quite a number of Mort’s
descendants formed heartfelt associations with
the district, connecting with the rural enterprise
and enjoying the natural beauty, the beaches,
and the fishing. Decay and fire saw the demise
of Comerang and another significant local Mort
property named Brou.

In the late 1980s Thomas Mort’s great great-
granddaughter Christina Kennedy saw the
opportunity to regain part of her heritage when her
husband Trevor and she purchased Horse Island in
Tuross Eakes near Bodalla, a beautiful and unusual
setting for an envisaged house and garden.

Making a garden

Trevor and Christina Kennedy had acquired
a gently hilly 200 acre island with four narrow
peninsulas fingering out into the expansive waters
of Tuross Eakes. To the northeast, across the lake,
a distant line of Norfolk Island pines alludes to the
beachfront at Tuross Head, and the ocean beyond.
To the northwest the vista across a wide body of
water is to dense eucalypt forest and the majestic
misty mountains of the Deua National Park.

The island, reached by an old hardwood bridge,
was one big unfenced paddock, planted with
kikuyu grass for grazing, and infested with weeds.
Stands of old southern mahogany (Eucalyptus
botryoides), forest red gums (Eucalyptus tereticornis)
and ironbarks (Eucalyptus sideroxylon) shaded the
open spaces, with an occasional large kurrajong
(Brachychiton populneus) on the ridge. Spotty
or spotted gums (Corymbia maculata) filled
the central valley, mingling with subtropical
rainforest. Along the water’s edge were mangroves
and groves of she-oaks (Casuarina glauca).

Eirst steps included weed control and the
regeneration of the foreshore. While the whole
island required thoughtful landscape conservation,
the construction of a cottage and its garden
setting was an important early initiative. This
was a relatively modest venture, and only hinted
at what was to come. The cottage, inspired
by colonial traditions, has a Tuscan-columned
veranda and a low hipped roof As the builder’s
debris was cleared away, Christina faced the

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Australian Garden History 29 (1) July 2017

challenge of making a garden setting for the
house. By chance, her friend the botanical
illustrator Robyn Mayo was visiting, and she
suggested that using a palette of native plants
would be truly complementary to the natural
beauty of the place. At an early stage Christina
recognised that a balance would need to be
achieved, with more useful, controlled landscapes
near the disciplined architecture of the buildings,
yet easing into informal patterns of planting as one
merged with the bush.

Christina threw herself into this new pursuit with
great vigour: buying up relevant books, exploring
the Australian Botanic Garden at Mount Annan,
joining the Australian Native Plants Society, and
befriending grevillea expert Peter Olde. Given
Trevor’s childhood beside the sea in Albany,
Western Australia — an area with a wealth
of native plants — Christina deeided that all
Australian species were eligible for consideration
in the creation of the garden.

As the cottage garden evolved, she saw the need
to make a scrappy dam — which compromised
the view — into an elegant water feature, and
the chance for the grassy slopes between the tall
trunked trees to become a compaet set of golf
links for Trevor. Like the writer Bill Gammage,
she came to appreciate that at its best, the east
coast Australian landscapes provided a kind
of splendid understated parkland: with drifts
of native grasses between clumped trees. As
Christina gradually appreciated the ‘capabilities’
of the place, a much larger scheme of vistas,
plantings and buildings came into view.

For the main house Trevor and Christina chose an
elevated site on the island’s northern tip. Initially
inspired by Captain Piper’s Henrietta Villa
(ciSiy) on Sydney Harbour, its carefully resolved
adaption of various colonial design sources reflects
the input of Sydney designer Brian Barrow.

The immediate environs of the main house are
formally planned, with the eastern garden’s rill,
circular pond, curving colonnade and lushly planted
border recalling great English prototypes. Yet! It
is Pandorea jasminoides ‘Variegata’ crowning the
colonnade, and the wonderful shrub border has
Melaleuca hypericifolia ‘Ulladulla Beacon’ clipped
in an undulating form interspersed with Gymea
and Lord Howe Island lilies (Doryanthes excelsa
and Dietes robinsoniana) plus massed kangaroo
paw and grevilleas. Firewheel trees (Stenocarpus
sinuatus) and red cedars (Toona australis) provide
vertical accents. Across the lawn, a handsome
composition of cycads and elkhorns provides a rich
visual plinth to the house.

The entrance drive culminates in a gravel
turning-circle before the house. The distinctive
black shafts and spikey topknots of grass trees
(X.anthorr}ioea australis) underplanted with
kangaroo paw, and bordered by sweeping
clipped banks of pink rock myrtle (Thryptomene
saxicola) provide one of the garden’s most striking
impressions.

Elsewhere there is the Grevillea Garden — a
species collection devised by Peter Olde — and
places for potting and propagating, a vegetable
garden, and guest accommodation with garden
interludes for the visitor’s enjoyment, all linked
together by grassy tail-treed fairways.

In nearly every direction are framed views to
the sparkling waters of the Tuross Lakes, often
with mountains glimpsed beyond. Christina in
a recent interview said: ‘Anything I did was just
an additional bonus; I don’t claim any credit for
the beauty of this place, as it was beautiful when
we came here’. Nonetheless, the garden at Horse

Top: Clipped
peppermints in front
of big house.

Bottom: Eastern
garden at big house.

photos Jason Busch

Australian Garden History 29 (1) July 2017

11

Island is a truly impressive achievement. In the
same interview Christina admitted: ‘I have never
thought of myself as particularly obsessive, but
I think it takes an obsessive personality to do
something like this’.

A book capturing the essence of
the place

In 2015 the State Library of NSW embarked
on a survey of contemporary gardens within the
state, and your writer was entrusted with the
task of locating gardens worthy of inclusion in
an exhibition. The year 2016 marked the 200th
birthday of Sydney’s Botanic Gardens and 50
years since landscape design had become a
profession. The quest was to discover gardens
created since the 1980s which were truly
innovative. We were not looking for Edna Walling
look-alikes. While I had known Trevor and
Christina Kennedy since the 1970s — when they
had moved into a house with a garden planted
by my mother — I was generally unaware of
Christina’s deep love of place, of history, and
of gardening. As I began to make my garden
enquiries, several people took me aside to tell me
that the Kennedys had created something both
substantial and significant near Bodalla. On an
island, no less!

The visit to Horse Island was one of the highlights
of the garden survey, as the place was at a pitch
of perfection. Such moments in a garden are the
result of huge effort under the surveillance of a
fastidious eye. To capture the essence of the place
the State Library commissioned photographer
Jason Busch and filmmaker Michael Power to
make a permanent record for their archives.

Their images formed an important element of

my exhibition ‘Planting Dreams: Grand Garden
Designs’, at the State Library of NSW September
2016 — April 2017.

Christina — while recognising that both the
buildings and the garden would further mellow
and mature — could see that her work at Horse
Island had reached fruition. Realising that all such
creations are ephemeral, she decided to make a
full and permanent record of Horse Island. This
would enable her descendants and others to
appreciate the special qualities of the place.

Hence the book, perhaps the finest monograph
on an Australian garden yet produced. The
generous landscape format is filled with specially
commissioned photographs by Jason Busch,
who reveals himself as one of Australia’s great
landscape photographers. The images are subtle
and evocative and convey the moods of the
landscape in different weather and different
seasons. Christina’s text is engaging and
thoughtful, and her own photos give substance
to the excellent catalogue of plants grown at
Horse Island.

One of the nicest aspects of this book is the
generous acknowledgement of all the people
who helped create this splendid garden in a
sublime landscape; of the commitment of the
photographer; and of those who ensured a truly
fine and well designed publication.

Howard Tanner AM is a Sydney architect with a
longstanding interest in Australian landscape design and
history. A founder of the AGHS, he curated the 2016-17
exhibition at the State Library of NSW 'Planting Dreams:
Grand Garden Designs: a Photographic Exhibition of
Gontemporary Garden Design'.

Focal garden
in driveway,
Horse Island.

photo Jason Busch

Horse Island

Christina Kennedy,
photography by
Jason Busch (2016)
Zabriskie Books,
Watsons Bay.

RRP $88

12

Australian Garden History 29 (1) July 2017

The grass trees of Paradise Creek

A close look at Tom Robert's painting
'Bailed Up' (1895) shows some small
shrubby plants in the foreground of the
slope behind the stagecoach. These are
Xanthorrhoea glauca. Plants growing near
Inverell today are believed to be the ones
Roberts painted - much larger of course,
although the genus is renowned for being
a very slow grower (1 cm a year).

I was lucky enough to be a participant in an
AGHS tour of Inverell, NSW, on 22—23 April
2017, which was advertised as a weekend with
Tom Roberts. As well as visiting the site of
‘Bailed Up’ on the old Armidale to Inverell Rd,
we also clambered down to a rugged site along
the MacIntyre River near the location where

‘In a Corner on the Macintyre’ (1895) was
painted. Roberts painted both works while
staying at the Newstead property in an area now
known as Paradise Creek.

Xanthorrhxjea glauca (commonly known as
‘grass tree’ or ‘blackboy’) has a fairly widespread
distribution extending from southern Queensland
through NSW and into northern Victoria. It occurs
in dry, well-drained and low nutrient conditions and
is very adaptable to most gardens. Paradise Creek is
a hotspot for this species, where they occur in great
clusters, crowding the valleys and gullies. A large
number would predate European colonisation. They
are highly sculptural plants. Our AGHS group saw
several with multiple crowns.

‘Bailed Up’,
oil painting by
Tom Roberts
(1895, 1927).

Art Gallery of
New South Wales

The Gamilaraay(or Kamilaroi) people of this
area called the species dhalan and it had many

Australian Garden History 29 (1) July 2017

13

Top: Xanthorrhoea
glouco believed to be
one of the plants in
‘Bailed Up’.The current
road is slightly higher
than that depicted
in the painting.The
original eucalypts in the
painting are long gone,
photo Peter Lloyd, 2017

Middle: A group of
Paradise Creek grass
trees.

photo Kim Woods
Rabbidge, 2017

Bottom: Members of
AGHS Northern NSW
branch in April 2017.

photo Kim Woods
Rabbidge, 2017

uses. Nectar from the flowering spike was dipped
into water in a coolamon to make a sweet drink
full of vitamins. Plants which had fallen over
were chopped up to get at the starchy heart
and roots were roasted and eaten. It is believed
that these taste like potato. The inside pale soft
ends of young fronds were chewed. The long
thick flowering spikes were sometimes used to
make spears and short ends became fire drills.
Xanthhorrhoeas are noted for their resin which
was used to glue tool parts together, making the
resin an important trade item. As well as being
used as a glue it was a medicine. When heated
and chewed it was a cure for dysentery or chest
complaints. Early settlers used the resin in a
variety of ways such as for varnishes and sealants.

Grass trees and fire

Judging by the dense skirts of dead fronds on
several mature specimens it has been a while since
a fire has gone through the Paradise Creek area. In
a bushfire these dry skirts are highly flammable,
engulfing the whole plant in flames. Smoke
particles remain on the plant and are washed into
the crown when it rains. This appears to promote
flowering although some plants seem to flower
without requiring a bushfire. Experiments with
pouring smoked water into the crown to promote
a flowering spike have been inconclusive. Plants
usually recover quite well after fire, with the
blackened trunks providing a wonderful contrast
to the long fine bluish-green fronds.

Finding and growing grass trees

Grass trees are a sought-after garden plant. Because
of their slow growth, it has become a common
practice to dig up plants and sell mature specimens.
In NSW plant sellers must be licensed and each
plant must carry a National Parks and Wildlife
Service tag. Some nurseries do sell seedlings but the
plants will look like clumps of Lomandra for many
years. Mature plants can be very expensive and
are not readily available although several nurseries
online do offer them for sale. If you are lucky
enough to acquire one of these amazing native
plants, there are a few tips to successful cultivation.

Eirstly they look best on a mound which will also
serve to provide good drainage. Dig a hole much
wider than the plant and deeper. Partially fill with
sand, then cut the pot away and carefully place
the plant on the sandy base. Eill around with
sand and water in well. Mulch well and water
regularly for at least three months to ensure root
development. Drench around the base of the plant
with Seasol or equivalent from time to time to
encourage root growth. If some of the leaves turn
yellow it could be a sign of root rot. Water with
some fungicide in a watering can over the foliage
and around the trunk.

Pm sure Tom Roberts would be astounded to
know that the small plant he painted so many
years ago is still growing, strongly connecting past
and present and — I hope — surviving well into
the future.

NSW AGHS member Maria Hitchcock is the author
of Correas: Austrolion plants for waterwise gardens (2010)
and A celebration of wattle (2012). She is a life member
of the Australian Native Plants Society (Australia) and
leads its Waratah and Flannel Flower Study Group, as
well as the online group ‘Save our Flora’. She holds a BA
in botany and a Masters in Professional Studies Honours
(Aboriginal Studies). She is a retired high school teacher.

14

Australian Garden History 29 (1) July 2017

Tim Gatehouse

Larchill: a rediscovered Irish garden
and its Australian cousin

In a country rich in horticultural treasures
one of the most significant but least known
gardens is to be found only 20 kilometres
from Dublin, near the village of Kilcock
in County Kildare. Established in the first
half of the 18th century and embellished
over succeeding decades, Larchill fell into
neglect until its cultural significance was
recognised by the present owners. Since
1994 they have restored it to the original
concept of a ferme ornee within an
arcadian landscape.

Historical background

A ferme ornee (literally, ‘ornamental farm’)
described a country estate laid out according to
aesthetic principles, but which was nevertheless a

productive farm. An arcadian landscape extended
the concept of the ferme ornee to embrace a
pastoral paradise which emulated the Arcadia of
classical literature and reflected human harmony
with nature. Both concepts derived from the
picturesque garden movement which developed
in France and England as a reaction to the formal
gardens of the 17th century.

In France, a wish for more relaxed living after
the death of the autocratic Louis XIV expressed
itself in a preference for naturalistic gardens, while
in England this was prompted by the desire of
wealthy travellers returning from the grand tour
to recreate the classical landscapes of Italy, as
depicted in the paintings of Claude, Poussin and
Salvator Rosa, on their own estates. The desire
for change was also influenced by descriptions of
the naturalistic layouts of Chinese gardens, which
were filtering back to Europe. One traveller who

Walter Thomas,
gardener at Murndal
homestead, cl 880.

State Library ofVictoria,
Winter Cooke family
papers MS 10840

Australian Garden History 29 (1) July 2017

15

Top left:The cockle
shell tower in the
walled garden.

Top right:The fox's
earth mausoleum.

Bottom I eft: The
Lake Temple,
looking towards the
Gothic lodge.

Bottom right: Fort
Gibraltar in the lake.

photos Tim Gatehouse

was impressed by Italian scenery and its painted
depictions was the architect William Kent, who
utilised the pictorial approach in his designs for
the renowned gardens of Stowe and Rousham.

However, picturesque gardens could also be created
on a smaller scale as was shown by Phillip Southcote
at Woburn Farm (not to be confused with W)burn
Abbey) in the 1730s. The term ‘ferme ornee’ was
first used in a description of this 60 hectare property.
Careful planting concealed the boundaries, but left
open views to distant landmarks. A circuit path
through farmland led to temples, statues and other
adornments. Amongst its many visitors were two
presidents of the United States, Thomas Jefferson
and John Adams. Of similar size to Woburn Farm
was The Leasowes, created by William Shenstone
in the English midlands between 1743 and 1763.
Shenstone was a poet whose published works
evoked the landscape of classical Greece. After
inheriting his father’s farm, Shenstone transformed
it in accordance with the visions conjured up by his
own poetry. It has now been restored to its original
state in recognition of its significance in the history
of landscape design and its rarity. The poor survival
rate of the ferme omee is probably due to the
difficulty of reconciling its ornamental and practical

aspects, regarded as impossible by the landscape
designer Humphrey Repton. The best known ferme
omee, I’Hameau, created for Marie Antoinette
at Versailles, survived because it was funded by
unlimited resources, whereas Shenstone struggled to
make a living from his.

The creation of Larchill

It was against this background that the ferme
ornee and arcadian landscape at Larchill was
established. In the early i8th century it was the
home farm of a larger property, Phepotstown
House. In 1708 Robert Prentice, a Quaker
merchant and clothier in Dublin, leased
Phepotstown to grow flax for the production
of linen, and commenced the development of
a ferme ornee on the home farm. He may have
drawn inspiration from fermes ornees he visited
abroad on his travels as a merchant, but it is more
likely that his sources were closer to home. A few
kilometres away are the estates of Carton, the
seat of the dukes of Leinster, and Castletown, the
estate of Thomas Connolly, the speaker of the
Irish Parliament. The demesnes of both included
lakes, statues and temples. Even closer to Larchill
is Dangan, the seat of the earls of Mornington.

16

Australian Garden History 29 (1) July 2017

During the 1730s and 40s Lord Mornington,
grandfather of the Duke of Wellington, developed
Dangan as an arcadian landscape, with extensive
water features which included lakes and canals.

By 1760 the Prentice family’s fortunes declined,
their estates were broken up, and Larchill became
a separate property. Larchill House assumed its
present appearance in about 1780 after additions
were made to the farm manager’s residence.

In 1790 the Watson family leased the estate
and continued its development in accordance
with the vision of the Prentices. Regrettably
subsequent owners failed to appreciate Larchill’s
aesthetic qualities and it fell into neglect until it
was purchased by the current owners in 1994 and
gradually restored.

Larchill today

Larchill today comprises approximately 25 hectares
of land sloping gently from north to south, the
house and farm buildings being at the higher
northern end. From here the view takes in
the estate with its lake and follies, and a wide
panorama of countryside. The distant spire of
Maynooth College in the middle distance and the
Dublin mountains which close the view are part of
the composition in the best traditions of the ferme
ornee, where distant views outside the boundaries
were visually incorporated into the design.

The boundaries of Larchill are defined by
conifer and broadleaf plantations. From the
road which borders the demesne on the east a
drive guarded by a Gothic lodge leads to the
understated Georgian house, framed on each side
by mature plantations. The lawn in front of the
house is bounded by a ha-ha with an elongated
fishpond forming the ditch. Behind the house
are extensive farm buildings, and to the west
is the walled garden, now rescued from grazing
cattle and restored to an i8th century design.

The centrepiece of the walled garden is a pond
in which stands an early i8th century statue of
Meleager, the boar hunter of classical legend.
Originally located in the lake, it may have had
greater relevance there than in its present location.

The most prominent feature of the walled
garden is the cockle shell tower, commanding
a magnificent prospect of the demesne and the
distant countryside. Greeper-clad and surrounded
by foliage, it could have been plucked from a
landscape painting brought home by a grand
tourist. The rooms are lined with elaborate
patterns of inlaid shells. Such towers were
common in picturesque gardens in England and
France, as at Radway Grange at Edgehill in

England, and at the Desert de Retz at Marly near
Paris, where the tower takes the form of a broken
classical column.

Opening off the south wall of the garden is the

ornamental dairy. Dairies such as this were

popular elements of the ferme ornee, where the

products of simple rural life could be sampled,

if not actually made. The walls of the Larchill

dairy were originally decorated with panels of

early 19th century Dutch tiles depicting battle

scenes, possibly of the Peninsular War, but were

removed by a former owner. Hints of historical

associations such as these recur throughout the

Larchill demesne. Further research is needed to

interpret the design features of the estate, which

appear to incorporate themes relating to current

fashions, political events and personal narratives

relevant to the owners. Immediately to the

west of the walled garden is the Gothic model

farm housing rare breeds of pigs, goats, fowls Sketch plan of

and pigeons in arch-windowed, battlemented Larchill Estate.

LARCHILL.

Australian Garden History 29 (1) July 2017

17

The Cowthorpe oak
planted at Murndal
(Tahara) in 1886,
a seedling from
the immense oak
at Cowthorpe in
Yorkshire.

photo Tracey Kruger

shelters. The location of the dairy and Gothic
farm next to the walled garden, in contrast to the
location of the working farm yard out of sight
behind the house, emphasises the essentially
recreational rather than practical nature of the
ferme ornee.

From the walled garden two walks meander
through the arcadian landscape, one through the
woodlands on the perimeter of the demesne and
one through the open pasture, both ultimately
leading to the lake. After passing a Chinese prayer
statue and lantern, the next prominent feature is
the mausoleum. Ireland is as rich in mausoleums
as it is in gardens, but Larchill’s was built as an
ornament to the landscape and not for occupation.
A circular stone mound is surmounted by a
colonnade of roughly hewn stone. The interior,
which would have contained the burial chamber,
replicates a fox’s earth, and is entered from a
semi-circular courtyard. According to local legend,
it was built by a former owner whose excessive
enthusiasm for fox hunting led to his belief that he
would be reincarnated as a fox.

Further down the hill a small enclosure which has
been transformed into another walled garden was
originally a sheepfold, whose inhabitants when
roaming the meadows would have contributed to
the desired atmosphere of pastoral tranquillity.
Almost at the lake’s edge is a rather enigmatic
feature, a circular earth mound planted with beech
trees. Known as feuilles, these were symbolic of
the many ancient structures found in the Irish
countryside, ranging from prehistoric burial mounds

to the mottes of Norman castles, and were intended
to impart an air of antiquity to the surrounds.

The most prominent component of the Larchill
landscape is the lake, which with the other
water features forms a complex hydraulic system
linking the ornamental and practical aspects of
the ferme ornee, the arcadian landscape and the
historical and political themes which permeate
its design. A ditch separates the lawn in front
of the house from the planting to the west, and
drains the immediate environs of the house and
farm. It then flows into an eel pond, with an eel
house on the banks, after which it feeds the ponds
bounding the southern edge of the lawn. The
ditch continues down to the lake, interrupted by a
miniature waterfall. Box drains from the meadows
also feed the lake. Formerly when the estate was
larger, the water overflowed from the lake down
cascades into a canal and then into a second lake,
before joining a natural stream. A construction
visible on the lakebed before its restoration is
thought to be a device for draining the lake.

It seems probable that these elaborate aquatic
arrangements constituted a fish farm, the ponds
from time to time having to be drained for
maintenance. Its economic significance to the
estate is indicated by the weathervane in the form
of a fish on the farm buildings. An i8th century
treatise on fish farming stated that ‘these ponds
should be placed one above another ... which will
be beautiful as well as profitable’. Beauty and
profit were, in theory at least, the essence of a
ferme ornee.

i8

Australian Garden History 29 (1) July 2017

Not only was the three-hectare lake a source of
beauty and profit, but also of recreation. One of
the more bizarre activities carried on in some 18th
and early 19th century gardens was the staging of
mock naval battles. The Dashwood family of West
Wycombe and Lord Byron’s family at Newstead
Abbey in England were particular enthusiasts.
Closer to Larchill on the lake at Dangan Lord
Mornington’s family and friends would participate
in battles between model warships large enough
to carry two combatants, and the defenders of an
island fort named Gibraltar.

The lake at Larchill has two islands, on one of
which is a battlemented fort with five towers,
also called Gibraltar, and on the other a circular
stone temple of primitive design, originally
with a sloping roof which drained into a central
pool. Between the two islands was the statue of
Meleager, now removed for its preservation to
the walled garden and replaced by a statue of
Bacchus. Britain’s naval wars were undoubtedly
the inspiration for the naming of the fort and the
mock battles attempting its capture. Gibraltar,
a British possession since 1713, had withstood
so many sieges that by the 19th century the
name had imprinted itself on the national psyche
as a symbol of British supremacy. The statue
of Meleager the hunter in its original position
in the middle of the lake would at first seem
incongruous, but this too may have been a subtle
reference to naval warfare. HMS Meleager was a
frigate which fought in Nelson’s fleet until it was
wrecked in 1801. Perhaps a member of the family
served on the ship.

The inspiration for the circular temple on the
other island may have derived from the fantasising
in fashionable circles in the late i8th century of a
supposed Druidic past in Britain and Ireland. A
Grand Lodge of Irish Druids existed in the 1790s,
whose activities included summer excursions to
members’ estates. The temple could have been
part of the stage setting for such events, as could
a seat by the entrance lodge and the gazebo seat
on the far side of the lake looking past Gibraltar
towards the house. Both are of a deliberately
primitive design similar to that of the temple
and mausoleum. Such pagan associations may
well have contributed to the sinister reputation
acquired by Larchill amongst the local population.

Restoration

When the present owners purchased Larchill in
1994, they commenced the long task of restoration
to remedy years of neglect. The lake had been
drained, cattle grazed in the walled garden, and

most of the garden follies were overgrown or
in ruins. In recognition of Larchill’s immense
cultural value as one of the few remaining fermes
ornees in Europe, grants from Irish and European
conservation authorities were made to assist the
project. The garden follies and lake have been
restored and rare breeds of sheep and cattle
again graze the pastures against a background of
woodlands, which have now achieved a maturity
of more than two centuries.

The restored lake has become the focal point of
a rich ecosystem. The banks have been planted
with meadow species which attract a rich insect
life, which in turn attracts wildlife, so that the
lake is now the home of swans, wild duck, newts,
lizards and coots which thrive amongst the marsh
rushes. The surrounding hedgerows have been
rejuvenated by the almost forgotten craft of hedge
laying and more are planned using native species

Larchill today must appear more as its founders
envisaged than it ever did in their lifetimes.

An Australian cousin?

The ferme ornee never took root in Australia,
having passed out of fashion in Britain when
Australian farming was in its pioneering stage,
and where in any case farming was always

embellished with forsythia and honeysuckle.

Rodon Bomford,
William Francis
Cooke, Cecil
Pybus Cooke
and Trevor
Winter outside
the conservatory,
Murndal
homestead,
Victoria I 880.

State Library
ofVictoria,

Winter Cooke family
papers MS 10840

Australian Garden History 29 (1) July 2017

19

Back view of strictly practical. For the same reasons, arcadian

homestead buildings, landscapes with follies and ornaments were not
Murndal homestead, i • i a • i i i i

^137Q created m the Antipodes. 1 he elaborate gardens

State Library ofVictoria, which surrounded some large homesteads

Winter Cooke family were usually expressed as well defined oases in

papers MS 10840 , • , i , •

Otherwise uncultivated pastures. Only in rare

instances were extensive areas of estates distant
from the homestead ever planted in a style
approaching that of Capability Brown.

One such example is Murndal in the Western
District ofVictoria, founded by Samuel Pratt
Winter in 1837, and now listed on the Victorian
Heritage Register. The Winter family had
owned Agher estate in County Meath, Ireland
since the 17th century, but in 1833 Samuel
Winter, several of his brothers and their sister
Arbella had emigrated to Van Diemen’s Land
and then to Victoria. Here Winter established
Murndal in rich country on the Wannon River.
Samuel Winter remained single but Arbella
married a neighbouring squatter Cecil Pybus
Cooke. Their descendants inherited Murndal.
The Winter family who remained in Ireland
continued to own Agher until the 1940s, when
financial pressures led to the sale of the estate
and demolition of the house.

Samuel Winter attempted to recreate in the
Western District the world he had left behind,
bringing to Murndal family portraits and relics
and surrounding his stone-gabled, mullion-
windowed homestead with a garden which could
have done credit to many substantial estates
in Ireland. He also landscaped the estate well
beyond the garden’s confines. Copses of trees were
planted on hilltops to create vistas, and a series
of descending lakes created by damming a creek

was reached through an avenue of elms. The
lakes were used for picnics and boating, rather
than mock naval battles, and the eye catchers on
the islands were large bushes of pampas grass,
rather than forts and temples. The surrounding
valley was planted with elms, hawthorns, poplars,
cypress, oaks and eucalypts.

Samuel Winter’s birthplace of Agher is only a few
kilometres from both Larchill and Dangan, and
although it is unknown whether he ever visited
Larchill, he would certainly have been familiar
with Dangan, Larchill’s major inspiration. As the
birthplace of the Duke of Wellington, it became
one of the most visited places in Ireland after
the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. It is not difficult
to discern a similarity between these beautiful
waterscapes on opposite sides of the globe.

Larchill is a rare survivor of the ferme ornee
and arcadian landscape concepts. Unlike such
grand examples as Marie Antoinette’s ferme
ornee, and Capability Brown’s landscapes such
as that at Blenheim Palace, it is the country
gentleman’s version of both. Murndal is the
country gentleman’s version transplanted to
the Antipodes.

Acknowledgements

My thanks to Mr Michael de Las Casas for permission
to use his plan of Larchill, and for allowing me to visit
the estate on a day when it was not open to the public.
Having it to myself was a wonderful opportunity to
experience to the full the beauty and tranquillity of that
rare landscape. Sitting on the hermit's seat looking across
to the lake and fort felt like being a figure in a Poussin
painting. Also thanks to Mr James Howley of Dublin,
architect and author, for sharing his immense knowledge
of Irish garden architecture with me.

References

James Howley (1993) The follies and garden buildings of
Ireland.Yale University Press.

Eleanor P De Lorme (1996) Garden pavilions and the
18th century French court. Antique Collectors Club.

Dr John Olley (2015) Conservation Report on Larchill.

Visitors guide to Larchill.

David Watkin (1982) The English vision: the picturesque in
architecture, landscape and garden design. John Murray.

Jerome Zerbe and Cyril Connolly ( 1979) Les pavilions of
the eighteenth century.WW Norton and Co.

Tim Gatehouse is a retired lawyer who is interested in
the pre gold rush history ofVictoria, architectural history
and the history of gardening. His articles on these
subjects have appeared in various journals.

20

Australian Garden History 29 (1) July 2017

In A4r Glover's summer garden

Betty Churcher walks with John Glover through a painting
of his home and garden at Mills Plain, Van Diemen's Land.

Mr Glover, with permission —

I’ll call you John, now, if I may?

Tell me how you made the picture ...
Caught the essence of this day.

I have a view, of course. That’s fitting.
Explain to me just what you’ve done.
Please walk me through your English
garden —

Bared to the ravages of sun.

One hundred years and more have
vanished

It’s only now our ways can cross.

The void between respective goings
Brimming with treasures and with
dross.

Mrs Churcher ... Betty's better!

Let me guide you through the piece -
A bagatelle, and nothing grander,

The outcome of one season's lease.

If words were my preferred expression,
I'd give them to you by the score.

But oily wash and thick impasto -
These are the things I have in store.

Unlike you, whose lines are legion -
Prose and sketches side by side -
I boast a host of finished pictures
Many relish, few deride.

Please amble through these banks of
flowers.

Left and right the beds outspread
March on towards exotic palms
That mark a boundary. As I said

My pictures are the things to ponder...
Your questions even I might ask ...
The mystery that underpins
The finished product and the task.

What are the roots of inspiration?

How is this new image true?

Let me tell you how I see it.

The rest is really up to you.

John Glover, ‘A view
of the artist's house
and garden, in Mills
Plains,Van Diemen's
Land', 1835.

Art Gallery of South
Australia

It feels quite strange to meet you here —
Tike falling down that rabbit hole
Into a world both strange and curious —
Then finding here a kindred soul.

I’d like to know how you conceive
The lines and colours, shapes and plan.
What are things that set you painting?
Where is the place that you began?

Think you’re telling me a story.

Say what the picture has to say ...

A thousand words, at least, to conjure
The rationale for this display.

But I will do my best to answer.

To tell you what you seek to know.
Remember these are works of age -
In every sense, an afterglow.

Thank you, John, I’m keen to hear you.
Trusting the singer and the song —
Enlisting old enduring wisdom!

What could possibly go wrong?

Australian Garden History 29 (1) July 2017

21

That’s your house and this, your
garden —

No distant views of town or sea —

But all wrapped up in grey-green
distance ...

This floral iconography.

Perhaps it’s best to start with ‘feelings’,
The things we recognise and share;

A stream of conscious, plain disclosure.
While all these elements are near.

Day settles with some sickly yellow
Luminescence in the grey -
A pool of sunlight, almost orange -
Clouds the evening drives away,

Minuscule in their defiance.

Warm vestiges in cooling sky -
Wisps, like some vague recollection -
Beasts in a cloudy topiary.

Nothing moves here. Dust has settled.
Summer coils a sinuous band.

And bonded in an open contract.
Summarily claims the land.

Drooping now in sweeping pastures -
Dryness limiting their scope -
Gasping native flora suffers,

(Though hardier than heliotrope).

These neat contrivances of order
Tame the Bush's spacious ease -
Parched into a strict compliance.

Thinly scattered, wiry trees ...

Your hollyhocks defy the season.

Still, you struggle and you see
In alien shapes and fearful forces.
Ciphers of mortality?

Far from your mulchy English forests.
Flowers from that other Hemisphere
Provide a little restitution.

Some sanity and salve for here.

Along the blue-grey ridge line cowering.
Ragged eucalyptus trees
Bunch, a curtain clumped together
Masking far extremities.

No 'rooky woods' or night that
thickens!

Here the dazzling light of day
Scours and cleanses with derision.

The sun, once risen, has his way.

Then, after dark, the moon's cool
lantern

Lights each corner of my fields.

From those dim paddocks, alien voices.
Reassuring, though concealed

In nooks and copses, floating softly
On the antipodean breeze.

Breathe life into the foreign darkness.
I've grown accustomed, by degrees.

And at our feet a proclamation —

Pinks and yellows, whites and blues.
Delphiniums, I think, and roses.
Blooms of such bright and cheery hues.

But this is not the ‘real’ scene, really.
Transcribed unchanged in any way.
The dream you paint here’s so much
grander.

You’ve stretched, enlarged the brave array.

We walk a path, enveloped in
A bright assertion. You’ll agree
That things you notice trigger
dreams —

Building such joyful symmetry

In Patterdale — this other Eden.

You catch the place in every mood.
Dancing figures, firelight, rainbows ...
Like these clustered blooms intrude

Upon a quite primeval vista.

But you populate the scene
With sympathy for those who lived
here —

Create for us what might have been.

You're right, of course, this lovely
garden

Carries a stamp of earlier time ...
Shields, against the rough predations
Of the Scribbly Sublime!

Before a final form congeals
I struggle with whatever fires
Imagination. (You will know).

In Patterdale, the land inspires.

Sometimes these hints of pastoral
Tranquillity, transform the place;

And human beings mollify
The lonely charm of scruffy grace.

Landscapes usher potent notions
Of Man's place. That's what I see.
Among strange plants that shed their
skins -

These trees of transparent canopy.

Whose bark can tumble into tangles.
The twigs and leaves beneath the feet
Crunch, their rapid desiccation
Within a fortnight quite complete.

Against this unexpected difference,

I plant my Lakeland daffodils.

Inflict a golden spectacle
To soften drab, surrounding hills.

And there (amongst them), native
people -

Sable owners of this place -
Tolerate, uncomprehending.

Every challenge, each disgrace.

Those who lived here left few marks -
Accepting what the world provided.
Just Nature's bounty, more or less.
Until their lives and ours collided.

Ancient Glover sees it all.

He understands the role of Fate!

(So little here's the same as England.)
Age grants the right to remonstrate.

I am not frail, as some would have it;
Not demented and not blind.

I cultivate quite new expression.
Deploying skills I'd left behind.

Rows and beds and plotted patches
Intersect in bold display.
Counterpointing lines of order
Nurtured amongst disarray.

To see, then know, and find expression
Pressing to be understood:

The cleansing flames that shape that
vision.

Searing it into the blood ...

Yes, that’s the task of cultivation —
Nostalgia cleaving new and old
Into curious contortions.
Engendering fresh tales, untold.

'The English Claude' in confrontation
With a New World, from behind.
Debilitating custom blurs
Eyes' innocence and what they find.

But I accept (with resignation).

Some differences I cannot change
Beyond a pointed recognition
Of the various and strange -

The need to apprehend a landscape
Dictated by the things I see.

Not built of other's expectations.
That's the essential alchemy.

Tending, then, new scraps of feeling.
Fondling a lively, growing past,

I grow in steady comprehension.
Fortify what cannot last.

What a pleasure, this encounter!
You’ve ratified, without a doubt
Things I have always understood -
Much I’ve often thought about.

Freed from my earthly obligations
I’ve time now to interrogate
A host of people. You’re the first.
Perhaps this will precipitate

A fund of interviews in which
Selected subjects might well be
Whatever fancy moves us most;
Selected by both you and me?

So many things to be examined!
Could Rodin be the place start?

I’ve spent time with his lovely
bronzes —

A pinnacle of sculptor’s art.

Just a boy in your time, really...

But I might venture to suggest.
Those things in Canberra’s lakeside
garden —

Things I’ve always liked the best.

Mr Glover, that was splendid.

I’ve made some notes of your advice.
Next time we might reflect upon
The Gates of Hell ... and Paradise.

Adjunct Professor Jeff Brownrigg

is a senior research fellow at the
Australian National University. His
published works include biographies
of Australians who deserve to be
better known, essays exploring
aspects of Australian and international
cultural heritage. For 30 years he
held various senior positions at the
National Film and Sound Archive.

22

Australian Garden History 29 (1) July 2017

The story of NZ's Hamilton Gardens

How do you develop a really ambitious
garden on an old city dump site with hardly
any budget in the initial phases? A group
of people in Hamilton, New Zealand, have
done just that.

In the 1960s, Hamilton Gardens was a bleak city
rubbish dump covered in blackberries with seagulls
circling above. Remnants of the Gardens’ earlier
history as a pre-European pa, British military post,
Victorian rifle-range and dog-dosing station lay
scattered across the site. Four acres which had
been part of the Hamilton East Town Belt were
passed over to Hamilton City Council for the
purposes of a public garden; an opening ceremony
for Hamilton Gardens was held on 24 July i960.
The site now extends over 54 hectares.

The gardens were awarded the prestigious
International Garden Tourism Award at
the International Garden Tourism Network

conference in France in 2014, an award previously
given to the Singapore Botanic Gardens and the
botanic gardens of Trauttmansdorff Castle in
Merano, Italy. Eooking around the gardens today,
it is hard to remember the area as it was in the
1960s, filled with piles of refuse and swarming
with rats and seagulls. Occasionally interesting
things still come to the surface but you’ll be
pleased (or possibly disappointed) to hear that the
rats and seagulls have gone.

In the early years development of the gardens
depended on government-subsidised labour
schemes, donated materials and sponsorship, with
the plants being grown in the on-site nursery.
Initially community support came from local
horticultural groups but as work started on new
gardens such as the Chinese Scholars’ garden or
Japanese garden, different cultural groups also
became involved. A strong community of interest
has developed around Hamilton Gardens and

Indian Char Bagh
(‘enclosed four part')
Garden, Hamilton
Gardens.

The Char Bagh or
‘enclosed four part’
form of garden
spread throughout
the Muslim world
between the 8th and
I 8th centuries. Its
complex symbolism
has ancient roots in
Islam, Christianity
and Buddhism.

Such gardens had a
focus on water and
irrigation because of
their origin in the hot
and dry climate of
present-day Iran.

©Hamilton Gardens 2017

Australian Garden History 29 (1) July 2017

23

Top: Artist’s
impression of
proposed Mansfield
Garden, Hamilton
Gardens.

Middle:Te Parapara
Garden, Hamilton
Gardens, a food
production and
storage garden based
on traditional Maori
practices.

Bottom:Tropical
Garden, Hamilton
Gardens.
©Hamilton Gardens 2017

there are a number of associated groups. The
most important group is the Friends of Hamilton
Gardens, who contribute thousands of hours of
voluntary work every year (as well as supplying
cake to the director of the gardens).

Over the past 35 years 15 trusts have been formed
to raise funds for specific gardens and events.

At present the Hamilton Gardens Development
Trust is raising funds for new gardens. Another
trust organises an annual Hamilton Gardens Arts
Festival. This event is held in different garden
areas each February and has grown to become the
region’s biggest arts festival.

For the past 30 years an onsite branch of the
local polytechnic has taught horticulture,
landscape design, arboriculture and floristry
courses. Staff there often use the gardens as
their outdoor classroom and soccer pitch. Each
week horticultural students spend a day working
alongside gardens staff — the best ones often
end up with a permanent job. Links are also
being developed between the gardens and the
University of Waikato’s history research unit, with
a research foundation currently being established.

Over a thousand events are held in the gardens
each year, an indication of the extent of community
involvement and support for Hamilton Gardens.
The location between State Highway One and an
attractive stretch of the Waikato River ensures that
there is, as some Australian visitors tell us, ‘more
water than you can shake a stick at’. To be fair we
haven’t felt compelled to try doing that, but we
do have consent to take water from the river all
year round.

Sustainable garden management practices include
supporting the conservation of native wildlife such
as native long-tailed bats and bellbirds through
planting, habitat protection and predator control;
ongoing planting programs and the propagation
and distribution of locally environmentally
sourced New Zealand plants for restoration work;
sourcing all irrigation and most of the water
for water features from the Waikato River; and
conserving water through night time irrigation,
mulching, monitoring and recycling.

Hamilton Gardens presents the history of gardens,
not just with plant collections, sculptures and
pavilions, but by showing us the history of gardens
around the world through the themes of different
civilisations, from an ancient Egyptian Garden to
a modern concept garden. There is a local flavour
in the pre-European Maori garden called Te
Parapara, and one of the four new gardens under
development is a re-created early 19th century
New Zealand garden featuring the elements
Katherine Mansfield described in her famous 1922
story The garden party.

These four will join the Zen Garden, Italian
Renaissance Garden, the i8th century Kitchen
Garden and others at Hamilton Gardens in
demonstrating our approaches to the art of
gardening in different times and different places.

Dr Peter Sergei is the founder and director of Hamilton
Gardens. He is an Associate of Honour of the Royal
Institute of Horticulture.

24

Australian Garden History 29 (1) July 2017

In memory of an ornamental fountain,
1880-1958

Botanic Gardens are dynamic entities.
Redevelopment may remove or obscure
some historically important aspects,
seemingly unconsciously. The City Botanic
Gardens, Brisbane, has been among
the most redeveloped public gardens in
Australia, and this article provides an
account of one unique location that has
been assigned to the historical memory.

Although much has been written about the history
of the Brisbane Botanic Gardens (now City
Botanic Gardens), very little has been published
about an impressive ornamental fountain and
an associated circle of palms that were removed
during redevelopment in 1958. The location of the
fountain can be seen in the map on page 26.

The whole northwestern section of the Gardens,
extending from Parliament House to the Brisbane
River, was originally known as Queen’s Park and
was managed separately to the Botanic Gardens
proper. It was added to the Gardens in 1865
under the management of Director Walter Hill.

In practice, the northern half of Queen’s Park
between Edward and Albert Streets was used
as sports fields, whilst only the southern half
between Albert and George Streets was included
in the Gardens. Hill wrote:

The addition will have the effect of
enlarging the botanical grounds, properly
so called, by about 10 acres [four
hectares], and when the preparationfs]
now in progress for laying out the walks,
tilling the soil, and storing it with
foliaceous trees and plants of varied

View of the terraces
and the original iron
fountain soon after
completion in 1880-81,
with Queensland
Parliament House in
the background.The
fountain can be seen
in the middle-right.

John Oxley Library,
negative 183089

Australian Garden History 29 (1) July 2017

25

Left:The Simmonds
stone fountain,
photographed in
1938.The fountain
was erected in the
Brisbane Botanic
Gardens in I 883.

John Oxley Library
negative 114753

Middle: Map of the
Brisbane Botanic
Gardens, I 897,
prepared by Philip
MacMahon, showing
the location of the
ornamental fountain
and terraces (above
Parliament House in
lower left, depicted
by a circle within a
square).

Queensland Agricultural
Journal I 897

Right:View from
the roof of the
Queensland
Parliament House
circa I 889.The
fountain and garden
beds are in the
foreground.

John Oxley Library, image
APO-040-0001 -0006

floral beauty, as well as of commercial
value, have been carried out, the general
view in approaching the Gardens will be
unmeasurably increased in picturesqueness
and interest (Annual Report, 1867 )

Despite Hill’s intentions, the area remained
underdeveloped except for the planting of trees on
the frontages to Alice and George Streets, and it
was not until i88o that a serious start was made in
constructing paths and creating gardens.

Being on a slope between Parliament House and
the Albert Street entrance, the area was excavated
to form three terraces connected by stone steps
(see map). Hill wrote:

The first level will be divided into a
croquet ground and a bowling Green ...
the second level will be laid out in flower¬
beds on grass plot, surrounding an iron
fountain of chaste design, which has been
ordered from England at a cost of £ 40 .

The third level will also be laid out and
planted in judicious situations and a
double row of palm trees will be planted
to form a vista from opposite the principal
entrance to the Parliamentary Buildings
to the fountain. (Annual Report, 1879 )

The terracing and placement of the fountain were
completed by July i88o (Annual Report, i88o).
Only two surviving photos of the fountain have
been located by this author. From the better
photo, it can be seen that the fountain was three¬
tiered with the bowl widths at a ratio of about
1:2:4 with the smallest bowl at the top, each held
on a sleek baluster and with the lowest baluster
set on a short column atop a square base.

With the retirement of Walter Hill in February
1881, James Pink was appointed as his replacement

under the title of Head Gardener in March 1881.
Although the Gardens were administered by the
Department of Public Lands, they were in effect
managed by a Board of Trustees. At this time no
more landscape design and construction had been
done to the area immediately around the fountain
and it remained as lawn. However there were
problems with the fountain. Pink wrote:

The basin of the fountain in the centre of
the middle terrace is cracked through in
several places, which causes a considerable
leakage ... The present naked and forlorn
appearance of this fountain would be greatly
relieved by small beds cut out in the grass
around its base. (Annual Report, 1882 )

Subsequently a decision was made to replace the
original fountain, and Pink wrote:

The small iron fountain, so ill adapted to
the position it occupied, has been removed,
and replaced by a beautiful substitute in
carved stone, and one which is a decided
credit to colonial design and workmanship,
being the work of Mr. Simmonds of this
city, (/uinual Report, 1883 )

The ‘Mr. Simmonds’ referred to was the
stonemason business of three generations known
as ‘J. Simmonds’, then situated in Adelaide
Street, Brisbane. The business was founded
in Melbourne in 1852 by John Simmonds Snr
(1793—1860), then, after his death, passed on to
his son John Simmonds Jnr (1828—1889). In 1880,
John Simmonds Jnr relocated to Brisbane and
with his son John Howard Simmonds Snr (1862—
1955) carried on the business. John Howard
Simmonds Snr took over management in 1889
upon the death of his father, and operated it until
his own retirement in 1920. His son, John Howard

26

Australian Garden History 29 (1) July 2017

(Jack) Simmonds Jnr (1905 — 1992), did not
follow in the family tradition but became an
internationally recognised plant pathologist.

The Simmonds’ stone fountain was in
the Renaissance-revival style with motifs
incorporating leaves and shells. It had a
single spout at the top. The first garden
beds were formed around the fountain
in 1885. Pink wrote that ‘an ornamental
design in flower-beds has been laid out
and planted on the upper terrace’ (Annual
Report, 1885). The arrangement can be
seen in the photograph taken from the top
of Parliament House. Pink, however, fell
into disfavour with the Board of Trustees
and was dismissed in August 1886. He was
replaced by the Kew-trained horticulturist
Alexander Menzies Cowan as Head
Gardener. Cowan oversaw drainage of the
terraces between 1886 and 1888.

Photographs from this period mostly show the
fountain in operation.

During the ensuing decades, the fountain and
palm circle remained intact. However, for most
of the time the fountain was not operational,
although it was reported in 1927 that the fountain
basin had been made into a children’s wading pool
(Brisbane Courier, 26 November 1927). Both the
fountain and the palms remained in place
until 1958 when the terraces were extensively
redeveloped. The ultimate fate of the fountain,
whether relocated, stored or destroyed, has not
been established.

Top: Postcard from
circa 1909, showing
the fountain in action
and the maturing
circle of palms.

Bottom: Postcard
of the fountain and
palm circle circa
1955, a few years
before the removal
of the fountain and
palms.

Collection of the author

Cowan also clashed with the Board of
Trustees and resigned in 1889. Control
of the botanic gardens was taken over by
the Department of Agriculture, and a new
Curator, Philip John MacMahon (1857—

1911) was appointed with the intention of
elevating the standard of the Gardens to
those in other Australian cities. MacMahon
was trained at Kew Gardens and had
been Curator of Hull Botanic Gardens,

England, 1882—87. He introduced some
bold landscape initiatives into the Brisbane
Gardens, such as the long avenues of palms and
weeping figs, and reconfigured some of the main
pathways. MacMahon had a deep admiration for
palms and significantly increased the Gardens’
collection.

Although no records have survived, it appears that
the palm circle around the fountain was planted
by MacMahon, very soon after he became Curator
in April 1889. The palms in the circle included
the queen palm (Syagrus romanzoffiana) and the
alexandra palm (Archontophoenix alexandrae).
When the garden beds were removed by
MacMahon in 1890, the palms were left in place,
with lawns extended up to their bases.

MacMahon continued as Curator until 1905 after
which he took on the role of Director of Forests
for Queensland. He was replaced as Curator by
John Frederick Bailey who wrote:

The pretty fountain in front of the Houses
of Parliament, which had not been in use
for some years, was recently repaired at a
small cost, and planted with water lilies.
(Annual Report, 1906 ).

Dr John Leslie Dowe is an adjunct research fellow at the
Australian Tropical Herbarium, James Cook University,
Cairns, and specialises in the systematics, taxonomy and
history of the palm family (Arecoceae). He was formerly
curator of the Townsville Palmetum, the only botanic
garden in Australia devoted to palms. He was co-author
of the palm treatment for the Flora of Australia vol 39
(CSIRO Publishing 2011).

Australian Garden History 29 (1) July 2017

27

Saving seeds: conserving our
natural heritage

A seed orchard of
threatened plant
species near Albany,
Western Australia.
Wire cages protect
young plants from
grazing by rabbits
and kangaroos.

photo Anne Cochrane

Seeds provide half the calories consumed
by people today, and they have also
helped humans to evolve. In essence,
the seeds of annual cereals such as rice,
wheat and maize underpinned the rise
of civilisation. Once people realised
they could control their food supply by
farming, human societies began to settle
and grow. Over subsequent millennia,
farmers retained seeds from plants with
higher yield and more pleasant taste, and
the art of domestication and breeding
commenced. Seed banks have a significant
role in safeguarding the conservation of
plant genetic diversity on which our food
security rests. This article describes some
of the activities of the Australian Seed Bank
Partnership.

Modern crop species are the result of sophisticated
programs of breeding and genetic improvement
designed to meet the needs of large-scale
agriculture. Many of these crop species are now
sown as monocultures and as such are at risk of
succumbing to stresses such as changing climates
and pests or diseases. Resilience is stronger
when there is a diversity of plants rather than a
monoculture. The old ‘landraces’ (traditionally
or locally adapted) and wild varieties of these
new cultivars are therefore vitally important as
they represent the genetic diversity necessary to
develop new resistant cultivars, helping to provide
resilience to emerging risks. Saving seeds is even
more important now than it was generations
ago. The world’s population is forecast to rise
to close to lo billion by 2050, our farming land
and our natural environments are under intense
pressure, and the climate of the world is changing.
Consequently, conserving seeds in banks is crucial
to our future wellbeing.

28

Australian Garden History 29 (1) July 2017

Historical perspective

One of the first true ‘seed banks’ was set up in
1926 in St Petersburg, Russia, by botanist and
geneticist Nikolai Vavilov. In principle, seed
banking is straightforward and relies on the seeds
of most (about 90%) seed-bearing plant species
surviving air-drying and then freezing, which
extends the longevity of these so-called ‘orthodox’
seeds in predictable ways. Since the 1960s,
government agencies, international organisations,
NGOs, and private philanthropies have invested
heavily in the creation of seed banks. For
example, halfway between the mainland of
Norway and the North Pole, the Svalbard Global
Seed Vault holds the world’s largest collection of
crop diversity. Deep in the permafrost — although
a changing climate affects even permafrost —
seeds from the crop species from around the
globe are stored as the ultimate insurance policy
for the world’s food supply. Also in the northern
hemisphere, the Millennium Seed Bank at the
Royal Botanic Gardens Kew (Wakehurst Place)
holds the largest and most diverse wild plant
species genetic resource in the world, mostly seed
contributed by a global network of seed banks.
These collections serve as permanent repositories
for the world’s vast genetic diversity in food crops
and, increasingly, its diversity in wild plants.

Australia's contribution to seed
banking

The Australian Seed Bank Partnership
(http://seedpartnership.org.au) is an alliance
of 12 organisations, bringing together expertise
from Australia’s leading botanic gardens, state
environment agencies and NGOs governed
by the Council of Heads of Australian Botanic
Gardens. Members focus their work on securing
Australian wild plant species in off-site seed

collections, and at the same time enhance
knowledge of native seed biology through
research. This knowledge helps to improve
conservation and restoration outcomes for
the Australian flora. Building seed collections
provides a resource for future use and an
insurance policy for the nation’s native plants
against threats such as land clearing, salinity
and weed invasion and diseases such as myrtle
rust and cinnamon fungus, which also affect
garden plants.

The seed banks of the Australian Seed Bank
Partnership are an important national resource
for the conservation of Australia’s native
plant species, in particular those that are rare,
threatened and poorly known. The research and
collection outcomes are shared through an online
database, the Atlas of Living Australia. One of
the partnership’s collaborators is the Australian
Grains Genebank; under its Australian Crop
Wild Relatives project, members will collect
and improve the current stores of indigenous
crop wild varieties, and enhance collections of
endemic plant species.

The Australian seed partnership grew from
individual seed bank involvement in the
Millennium Seed Bank Project. Between 2000
and 2010, through this global seed conservation
partnership, Australia conserved seed from more
than 8000 of our native species, predominantly
those species considered at risk of extinction.

This effort by the Australian seed bank partners
contributed to the Millennium Seed Bank Project’s
success in having 10% of the world’s dryland flora
in ex situ collections by 2010. The challenge now is
to conserve an additional 15% of the world’s flora
by 2020. Australian seed banks are contributing
to this goal through the Australian Seed Bank
Partnership’s 1000 Species Project.

Left: Collecting seed
of a small annual,
photo Andrew Crawford

Right: Bagging
developing fruits of
grevillea helps to
ensure mature seed
is collected,
photo Anne Cochrane

Australian Garden History 29 (1) July 2017

29

Top: Performing
germination tests to
assess the viability
of the seed before
storage,
photo Anne Cochrane

Middle: A handful
of the Western
Australian feather
flower, Verticordio.

Bottom: Seeds are
germinated on agar
in glass dishes, under
controlled conditions
in the laboratory.

photos Andrew Crawford

Capturing and curating genetic
diversity

Seed collection is not just about grabbing a handful
of seed from the most bountiful plant. It is about
trying to represent the diversity of the population
or species. Small amounts of seed from many plants
is much better than lots of seed from a few plants.

When collection of seed by hand picking proves
difficult, seed bags are used to make sure
sufficient seed can be collected for the intended
purpose. These muslin bags let light and
moisture pass through, and are placed around

developing fruits allowing the maturation process
to continue unhindered.

Collecting is only one aspect of the seed
conservation process. The collections need to
be curated to a high standard to ensure seed
longevity is not compromised. Seeds are processed
and quantified before testing and storage.

In many cases, seeds are easily extracted from
their fruits; but some require just that little more
work, for example the woody fruits of Banksia
require heating for seed release.

Seed collection quality has an impact on the
usability of the seed resource and so seeds are
tested for their viability, mainly by germinating
samples, although X-ray machines and destructive
chemical tests can also be used to assess viability.

Preserved for posterity

Once seeds are cleaned and quantified they can be
dried and frozen. But not all seed can be stored at
sub-zero temperatures and alternative means of
storage may be required.

Drying seed at temperatures of around 15—20° C
and at low humidity (~i5% relative humidity) is
a benign way to reduce seed water content before
freezing. Drying of seed is necessary to prevent
crystallisation of free water in the cells, and
increases seed longevity in storage.

The collections are an insurance policy, but
most importantly they provide a resource for the
reintroduction and restoration of declining species.
Many partners of the Australian Seed Bank
Partnership are active in reintroducing threatened
species back into the wild.

Scientific research

Many Australian Seed Bank Partnership members
conduct scientific research into their collections
to gain insight into the biology and ecology of
the species targeted for collection. This kind of
research also contributes to getting more native
plant species into horticulture and available
for the home gardener. Much of the research
revolves around the need to be able to re-establish
the species back into the wild, either through
reintroduction or restoration.

Dr Anne Cochrane is a senior research scientist
with the Department of Biodiversity Conservation
and Attractions, Western Australia. She manages the
Threatened Flora Seed Centre, a seed bank for the
conservation of rare, threatened and poorly known
native plant species from Western Australia, and is
currently researching the impact of a warming drying
climate on the ability of seeds to germinate.

30

Australian Garden History 29 (1) July 2017

For the bookshelf

John Dwyer (2016) Weeds, plants and people
PenFolk Publishing, Melbourne
(www.penfolk.conn.au), paperback,

XV + 293 pp, RRP $49.95

John Dwyer’s book on weeds and their
relationship to human culture and society is a
work of scholarship developed over many years,
and underpinned by his PhD research on this
topic. The book draws on resources from the
Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria Herbarium, and
conference presentations road tested at meetings
of the Weed Society of Victoria and the Council
of Australasian Weed Societies. Professor Tim
Entwisle provided the foreword — a thoughtful
introductory piece that identifies the book’s key
strengths. The book’s publication was supported
by AGHS’s Kindred Spirits Fund.

The introduction explores human psychology
in relation to weeds, proposing that we are
frightened of plants that grow where we don’t
want them, and explaining why we use emotive
and subjective language when we talk about
them. John calls for objective language and
thinking about weeds, taking British historical
ecologist Oliver Rackham’s long view that weeds
are ‘highly specialized plants intimately linked
to farming’, and part of the historic flora of the
‘ordinary landscape ... made by both the natural
world and by human activities, interacting with
each other over many centuries’. Our tendency
to describe weed behaviour with emotive terms
such as ‘invading’ rather than ‘spreading’ or
‘infesting’ rather than ‘being present’ gives the
impression that plant behaviour is the problem,
and underestimates the contributions humans
have made to weed incursions globally.

The frontispiece reproduction of Albrecht
Durer’s stunning 1503 watercolour Das
grosse Rasenstuck, depicting several European
grass and herb species that have made their
presence felt as weeds in Australia, was a very
appropriate choice. The painting invites closer
and thoughtful inspection of the weed species
it depicts, as does John’s writing. It was a treat
to learn that two of my significant historical
luminaries — John Evelyn and John Claudius
Eoudon — had strong views about the value
(or otherwise) of particular weed species.

Dating back much further, it was fascinating
to discover which weeds were consumed or
gathered by prehistoric humans. John argues
that 26 species found under these circumstances

have documented history as food or medicinal
plants, supporting the idea that they have been
cultivated since very ancient times.

The illustrations
throughout feature
colour reproductions of
herbarium specimens.

While of value to
demonstrate that weeds
can be found anywhere
(and by anyone), some
of these species may
not be immediately
recognisable in
preserved form —
photos of living
specimens would likely
have helped readers not
so familiar with these
plants.

The final chapter presents a call to rethink the
broadscale use of herbicides that we currently
employ in our landscapes. While the notion
of returning to mechanical/cultural control
methods for roadside is appealing, there is little
sign that potential risks from herbicide use will
be enough to overcome economic drives for
effective weed control in agricultural and other
broadscale landscapes. This would have been an
opportunity to explore the complex discussions
and negotiations that will be needed across the
broad range of stakeholders who will be part of
such a major and costly shift in behaviour.

On a personal note, I found the background
detail about the category of ‘sleeper weeds’
particularly useful. It’s challenging to find some
of your reliable horticultural performers identified
as potential threats — and this triggers a rethink
about their inclusion in future teaching programs.

The book includes notes and sources for each
chapter, a useful glossary, a plant name index
that encompasses both botanical and common
names, and an extensive reference list. It is a
thoughtful book by an author who has gained a
deep scholarly knowledge of a fascinating topic.
It’s a valuable addition to our ongoing discussion
about plants that grow where they’re not
wanted, and our role in making them a problem.

Dr Sue Murphy is a lecturer in horticulture at the
University of Melbourne’s Burnley Campus; she has
a special interest in weeds.

Australian Garden History 29 (1) July 2017

31

AGHS Annual General Meeting

The 38th Annual General Meeting of the Australian Garden History Society will be held on Saturday
28 October 2017 at 12.30pm at the State Library of Victoria, 328 Swanston Street, Melbourne. Items to
be included on the agenda should be emailed to the AGHS office (info@gardenhistorysociety.org.au)

Branches are asked to nominate their representative to the National Management Committee and to
inform the Secretary (c/- AGHS office) by COB Thursday 7 September 2017.

AGJdSjiews

Colleen Morris
(left) and Beth Hise
(Sydney Living
Museums, right)
with the award
for the exhibition
‘Florilegium: Sydney's
painted garden’.

Honours for the Florilegium exhibition

The 2016 exhibition 'Florilegium: Sydney’s painted
garden' curated by garden historian and longstanding
AGHS member Colleen Morris has won Best
Exhibition in the Events and Exhibitions category
of the National Trust Heritage Awards for 2017.

This award is presented for exhibitions and displays
emphasising and promoting education, interpretation
and community engagement.

The exhibition featured
87 contemporary botanical
paintings illustrating significant
plants in the collections of the
Royal Botanic Gardens and
Domain Trust. It is touring
to Kew Gardens in 2018
(see Exhibitions, page 33).

Awards were presented on
28 April 2017 at Doltone
House in Sydney, as part of the
Australian Heritage Festival.

From Wilderness to
Pleasure Ground

Thanks to the current committee of
AGHS’s Southern Highlands branch,
the collected papers of a past annual
conference. From Wilderness to Pleasure
Ground: discovering the garden history
of the Southern Highlands, have been
released. The publication includes all but
three of the papers given at the October
2008 AGHS conference. As well as
documenting the conference itself, the
publication is a major contribution to the
region’s garden history. It will be available
through the AGHS website.

Congratulations not only to Dr Meg Probyn
for the compilation of the papers, but more
importantly to the speakers — Richard
Aitken, Ian Bowie, Linda Emery, Stuart
Read, Jenny Simons and Jane Lemann —
who provided their papers for publication.

Call for papers for 2018 conference

AGHS is seeking speakers for its 39th annual national conference on 26-29 October 2018 in the
Southern Highlands at Mittagong, NSW.

Papers are welcome on any topic related to a wide interpretation of the theme Cardens in times of
peace and conflict. This could include:

• Fighting the war at home - retreat to the garden to dig for victory

• Memorialisation of gardens - avenues of honour, peace gardens

• Multicultural gardens - immigrants adapting their ideas of gardening to Australia

• 'Not in My Backyard' - plants, shade, chemicals and development causing conflicts between
neighbours and communities

• Reconciling with the elements - droughts and floods and the effect of climate change

• Fighting the weeds - indigenous and local plants versus exotic species; native species as weeds

Please email a 250-word abstract with title 'AGHS2018 submission [your surname]' to
info@gardenhistorysociety.org.au by Friday 18 August 2017. Include a title and explanation of how
it addresses the conference theme, technical support required (if known), 100-word biography,
and contact details email, telephone, and postal address. We anticipate responding to you by late
November 2017.

32

Australian Garden History 29 (1) July 2017

Tours of thji gardens at '
Melbourne's Ripp6|(^ Lea

The gardens of 14 acre National Trust
property Rippon Lea Estate in Elsternwick
are of national significance, with their
abundance of trees, sweeping lawns,*
lake and loofe-out tower, and notable
/emery. Durihg'spring 2017 the National
ppsjt is running tours of the gardens
withil^owledgeable volunteer guides.

'On re tdurs, visitors will learn about
the development of the estate and hear
stories of how this 19th century pleasure
garden has been enjoyed by the families
who called Rippon Lea home.

Tours of the garden focus on Rippon Lea's
social history. Subject to availability on
the day, tours will run on Wednesdays
and Thursdays at 11 am, and Fridays at
2 pm, from 27 September 2017. Tours
are free, but there is a $10 entry fee for
the grounds. Entry is free for National
Trust members.

See www.ripponleaestate.com.au for
more information. For group bookings
and private tours of up to 12 people,
contact bookings@nattrust.coni.au

Rxhihitions

The

A Florilegium exhibition will be held at the Shirley Sherwood
Gallery at Kew Gardens, England, from 31 March to
16 September 2018, in the first and main galleries of this
wonderful venue. The exhibition is the result of a
partnership between the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew
and the Royal Botanic Gardens and Domain Trust in
Sydney. All of the paintings from the 2016 Sydney
Florilegium exhibition will be on display at Kew. At the
same time the temperate house at Kew will reopen
after a £25 million, five year restoration program. The
original plans and those of the restoration project will
be on show in one of Kew’s long galleries. This display
will complement the Florilegium exhibition. As well
as the historical links between the two institutions,
particularly through collectors and botanists, the species
painted in the Florilegium exhibition are in many cases
among those replanted in the historic glasshouse.

Florilegium at Kew Gardens

Margaret Pieroni 'Banksia praemorsa'.

From Colleen Morris and Louisa J Murray

The Florilegium, the Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney, Celebrating 200 years
(The Florilegium Society at The Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney 2016)

The Florilegium project is grateful for the support and
encouragement of patron Dr Shirley Sherwood who has
worked to bring our Florilegium to Kew Gardens. She will also
curate an exhibition of Australian artists from her collection to
complete the theme in 2018.

Australian Garden History 29 (1) July 2017

33

Diary dates

South Australia

Sunday 20 August 2017

South Australian branch ACM,
lunch and speaker

10.45 am Meet inWittunga Botanic
Garden carpark, Shepherds Hill Rd
Blackwood for guided walk, followed
by AGM (12.30 pm) and lunch at
the nearby Belair Hotel. Bookings via
Trybooking.

Sunday 10 September 2017

Day bus trip to Coonalpyn - dry
land gardening, local art projects,
regional history

9 am Depart Adelaide, hearing about
settlement and farming as we pass
through rural towns. Gountry style
catered lunch and tour of 'Rural
Renewal Through the Arts' project inci
magnificent Silos Mural, completed 2017.
Bookings via Trybooking.

Southern Highlands NSW

Saturday 8 July 2017

Winter seminar

2-4.30 pm, Bradman Museum, Bowral.
Stuart Read will talk on 'Brown, green,
other colours & players - a tercentenary
odyssey’, Richard Heathcote on 'Pets and
plants fit for French Empress’s garden’.

Sunday 20 August 2017

Southern Highlands branch AGM
and two presentations

Dr Greg Johnson 'Write to Garden in
Australia: I 888 to 1938 (a continuation
from Greg’s AGHS 2015 lecture'Quill
and Spade - pioneer garden writing in
Australia’); Gharlotte Webb: 'Parsnips to
Picturesque - evolution of gardens in the
Southern Highlands’.

AGHS national conferences

2017

Friday 27 - Sunday 29 October 2017

Marvellous Melbourne:
the challenge of change

AGHS 2017 annual conference. State
Library ofVictoria, Melbourne (see p 36).

2018

Friday 26 - Monday 29 October 2018

Gardens in times of peace and
conflict

AGHS annual conference, Mittagong,
Southern Highlands of NSW.

\ For further details on events, please see the AGHS website or contact the relevant branch.

Tasmania

Sunday 20 August 2017

Tasmanian branch AGM and lecture
on Home Hill by Jennifer Stackhouse

2 pm Philip Smith Building, 2 Edward St,
Glebe, Hobart. No charge for this meeting.
AGHS Tasmanian branch committee
member Jennifer Stackhouse is working
on a conservation plan for the garden of
Home Hill outside Devonport. Home Hill
was the home of Sir Joseph Lyons,

10th Prime Minister of Australia, and
Dame Enid Lyons, the first woman to be
elected to the House of Representatives.

Victoria

Sunday 16 July 2017

Working bee, Turkeith', Birregurra

From 10 am. Lifts can be organised.
Morning tea and lunch provided. Bring
tools suitable for working in a large
garden. Gontact Fran Faul
03 9853 I 369, franfaul@gmail.com.

View ofTurkeith homestead, Birregurra,
Victoria, photographed in about 1880 by
Thomas j Washbourne.AGHS’s Victorian
branch holds working bees in the garden
ofTurkeith.

State Library ofVictoria MS 14402

Thursday 17 August 2017

Winter lecture and Victorian branch
AGM (topic and speaker TBC)

6 for 6.30 pm, Mueller Hall, National
Herbarium, Birdwood Ave, South
Yarra. Members $20, non-members
$25, students $ 10. Book on Trybooking
https://vvvvwtrybooking.com. Enquiries to
Lorraine Powell, Ghain AGHS Victorian
branch, lorraineepowell@gmail.com.

Sunday 20 August 2017

Working bee, 'Mt Boninyong'

Gontact Fran Faul 03 9853 1369,

franfaul@gmail.com.

Sunday 17 September 2017

Working bee, 'Eurambeen'

Gontact Fran Faul 03 9853 1369,

franfaul@gmail.com.

Sydney and

Northern New South Wales

Monday 10 July 2017

Northern NSW branch talk
'Pets and plants fit for a French
Empress's garden at Malmaison'

6 pm Function centre, Saumarez,
Armidale,talk by AGHS national chair
Richard Heathcote. $25, bookings

gwilson42@bigpond.com.

Saturday 15 July 2017

Sydney guided walk and talk in
Callan Park

2-A\30 pm Roslyn Burge and Stuart Read.
Members $20, guests $30, includes light
refreshments. Bookings essential.

Wednesday 16th August 2017

Short AGM, illustrated talk by
Tanya Hoolihan

6 pm for 7- 8.30 pm, Annie Wyatt Room,
National Trust Gentre, Observatory Hill.
'Beyond exploration - the botanical legacy
of Ludwig Leichhardt’. Members $20, guests
$30 includes light refreshments.

Bookings essential.

ACT Monaro Riverina

Thursday 6 July 2017

Lecture by AGHS patron Sue Ebury

6 pm,Theatre, National Library of
Australia, Parkes AGT 'Visionary or vandal?
Lancelot "Gapability” Brown and the
English landscape’, I Ith annual joint event
with Friends of the National Library of
Australia. $15 AGHS members and Friends
of the NLA, $20 non-members, includes
refreshments. Bookings through the
National Library at http://tix.yt/capability
Note NO bookings to be made through
AGHS.

Thursday 24 August 2017

ACT Monaro Riverina branch AGM
followed by annual lecture

5.30 for 5.45 pm, Menzies Room, National
Archives of Australia, Parkes ACT. Richard
Aitken 'Planting Dreams: Shaping Australia
Gardens’. $ 10 members, $ 15 non-members,
includes refreshments.

Western Australia

Sunday 16 July 2017

A day in the country in the Pinjarra
area

Sunday 20 August 2017

WA branch AGM, Armadale

Australian Garden History 29 (1) July 2017

Publication

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

Editor

Bernadette Hince
editor@gardenhistorysociety.org.au
PO Box 150
Dickson ACT 2602
Phone 0424 857 284

Designer

Mariana Rollgejser

ISSN 1033-3673
Text © individual contributors
Images © as individually credited
Design and typography
©Australian Garden History Society

Subscriptions (GST INCLUSIVE)

Membership

1 year

3 years

Individual

$72

$190

Household

$98

$260

Corporate

$260

$607

Non-profit organisations

$98

$260

Advertising rates

1/8 page $400

I /4 page $660

1/2 page $990

Full page $1500

Inserts Rates on application

Discounts for repeats

Loadings apply to preferred position placements

Enquiries: Robyn Robins

TollFree 1800 678 446

Phone 03 9650 5043

Email info@gardenhistorysociety.org.au

Editorial Advisory Committee

CONVENER
Roslyn Burge

MEMBERS
Ray Choate
Julie Collins
Ruth Morgan
Colleen Morris
Patsy Vizents
Felicity Watson

NATIONAL MANAGEMENT COMMITTEE

Richard Heathcote (Chairman)

Jessica Hood (Vice Chair)

Roslyn Burge (Secretary)

Elizabeth Teed (Treasurer)

John Maurer (Public Officer)

Elected members

Bronwyn Blake
Ruth Morgan
Stuart Read

State representatives on National Management
Committee

ACT Kay Johnston
NSW Meg Pro by n
QLD vacant
SA Elizabeth Ganguly
TAS Lynne Paul
VIC Wendy Dwyer
WA Carmel O'Halloran

BRANCH CONTACTS

ACT/Monaro/Riverina

Sue Byrne

PO Box 5008, Lyneham ACT 2602
Phone 02 6247 3642
suebyrne@effect.net.au

Northern NSW

Bill Oates

c/o Heritage Centre, University of New England

Armidale NSW 2350

woates@une.edu.au

Queensland

Wendy Lees

1818 Mt Glorious Rd

Mt Glorious QLD 4520

Phone 07 3289 0280, mobile 0409 328 905

wendyklees@gmail.com

South Australia

Ray Choate
PO Box 543

North Adelaide SA 5006
Phone 0431 470 345
ray.choate@adelaide.edu.au

Southern Highlands

Jennifer Carroll
PO Box 2327
Bowral NSW 2576
Phone 0419 275 402
aghs.sh.info@gmail.com

Sydney

James Quoyle

Minley, 20 Chalder Street, Newtown NSW 2042

Phone 0412 189 769

James@qanda.com.au

Tasmania

Elizabeth Kerry

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

Victoria

Lisa Tuck

PO Box 479, Somers VIC 3927
Phone 0418 590 891
lisatucki @bigpond.com

Western Australia

JohnViska

148 Chelmsford Rd, North Perth WA 6006
Phone 08 9328 1519
johnviska@gmail.com

AUSTRALIAN

GARDEN

HISTORY

SOCIETY

The Australian Garden History
Society is a history and heritage
partner of the Australian Museum
of Gardening.

Patron

Sue Ebury - Countess ofWilton

National Executive Officer

Robyn Robins

Enquiries

TollFree 1800 678 446

Phone 03 9650 5043

Fax 03 9650 8470

Email info@gardenhistorysociety.org.au

Website www.gardenhistorysociety.org.au

Postal address

AGHS, Gate Lodge
100 Birdwood Avenue
Melbourne Victoria 3004

Australian Garden History welcomes
contributions of any length up
to 1200 words. Prospective
contributors are strongly advised
to contact the editor before
submitting text or images.

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

35

Marvellous Melbourne

THE CHALLENGE OF CHANGE

38th annual national AGHS conference

‘Marvellous Melbourne — the challenge of change’ will take
place on Friday 27 — Sunday 29 October 2017 at the State
Library of Victoria. A day of lectures on Friday will be followed
by two days of garden visits, ranging from the grand to the small
and experimental. A number of the gardens we will visit are
rarely open to the public. Monday’s optional day tour will explore
the Dandenong Ranges.

The extraordinary growth of Melbourne in the 1880s and
the legacy of gold provided the wealth to create mansions
and gardens and engendered the civic pride that inspired
the development of the city’s grand parks and avenues.

The conference will explore the social and economic pressures
affecting Melbourne’s history, and the challenges for
conservation, urban planning and garden design in adapting
to change.

Speakers include urban historian Professor Graeme Davison AO;
Mary Chapman, Parks and Waterways, City of Melbourne;

John Rayner, Director of Urban Florticulture, University of
Alelbourne; Dr Peter Sergal, Director of Hamilton Gardens, NZ;
MMBW map enthusiast Malcolm Faul and garden-owner the
Hon Justice Julie Dodds-Streeton QC.

PRE-CONFERENCE TOUR

Monday 23 October - Wednesday 25 October 201 7

A 3 day/2 night pre-conference tour based in Camperdown
explores the expansion of particular pastoral estates on the
volcanic plains of the Western District from 1847. The tour
is organised by AGHS’s Victorian Branch and will be led by
conservation landscape architect and long-time AGHS member
Pamela Jellie. Booked out at time of printing.

POST-CONFERENCE TOUR

Tuesday 31 October - Monday 13 November 201 7

14-day / 13 night post-conference New Zealand South Island
tour. Lynne Walker invites you to join her on a personal tour
of her home island exploring a wide range of extraordinary
gardens from coastal to high country, castle to courtyard and
enjoying great cuisine and wines along the way. Tour begins in
Christchurch and is limited to 45 people.

GARDEN

HISTORY

The Australian Garden History Society promotes awareness and conservation
of significant gardens and cultural landscapes through engagement, research,
advocacy and activities.

Phone: 03 9650 5043 ■ Tollfree: 1800 678 446 ■ www.gardenhistorysociety.org.au