Your Garden
HOW wonderful it was to have Armidale host the Australian Garden History Society (AGHS) Conference this weekend past, I am sure there has been a great effort by many to have successfully achieved this feat!
I would like to talk about two of the gardens that were visited with which I am very familiar.
The older of the two being Bona Vista, which is at least a hundred years in the making and obviously a very well established garden which has deliberately been kept in the style in which it was first planted.
I am lucky enough to have seen photographs taken in its very early years.
When I first saw these I lost heart as I was thinking my garden would take a hundred years to look like this one does now.
This of course is nonsense as gardens gain significant maturity quite quickly and give pleasure all through their lives.
The other point being that gardens are living and dynamic and must be renewed periodically or would eventually die of old age.
Some of the notable features of this garden are the wonderful cypress hedge which creates the walled gardens, the beautiful clay garden edging tiles which mark out the lovely beds of perennials in front of the house, the sweeping drive and the beautiful old trees which all creates an amazing microclimate within its rooms and a feeling of being in the country.
The second garden, Glen Lea, is much younger. Nearly 40 years ago the house was quite obvious as you passed by, whereas now very little of it can be seen until you come in the drive.
This site is on a north facing slope and has considerable protection from the cold winds. It has walled areas and hedged areas which are secluded and protected from the weather, allowing some softer plants to thrive.
There are plants against a north facing wall of the house that really should not survive in Armidale which are thriving, clearly little frost bothers them. Every time I visit this garden I find another little treasure I had not realised was there.
Both of these gardens have been nurtured by their owners for a long number of years so design ideas have not been changed by ’different eyes’. I am sure our visitors this weekend have had great pleasure participating in this conference.
