Open Garden: Flint Hill, Woodend, Victoria

Flint Hill gardens have been restored to their 1920s splendour.

Flint Hill, a 6ha woodland garden surrounded by eucalypt parkland. Picture: Alison Griffiths

Open garden: Flint Hill, 65 Romsey Road, Woodend, Victoria, 10am-4.30pm; $10, under-18s free. Owner: Sir Roderick Carnegie.

Describe the garden: It’s a 6ha woodland garden, about an hour from Melbourne, surrounded by eucalypt parkland with views to Mount Macedon and Hanging Rock. Pathways wind through the woodland, crisscrossing each other as they lead to a series of ponds and a lake.

Flint Hill dates back to 1922, with the gardens laid out by Mrs Brookes who was here until 1955. The trees she planted now form a canopy over the sweeping lawns. She had a great collection of rhododendrons but not all of them have survived.

When we bought the property in 1980 it had been sadly neglected. I started with a mattock at one end and it took me a year to clear the blackberries. The ponds were dry and overgrown. We put in a post-and-rail fence around the garden, made of ironbark, adzed in the old-fashioned way with no nails. We didn’t change the structure or layout, but just tried to get the garden back to what it was — a peaceful, woodland garden. There are good rose beds and a herbaceous area near the house, in addition to a vegetable garden and an orchard.

What makes it special: The magnificent trees: oaks, maples, beeches and conifers, and hundreds of majestic rhododendrons. A bishop pine (Pinus muricata), Lucombe oak (Quercus x hispanica ‘Lucombeana’) and Caucasian fir (Abies nordmanniana) are listed on the national register. There are several peppermint trees (Eucalyptus radiata) thought to be more than 200 years old, which still remain from the peppermint wood that originally sheltered the garden and house from the north.

Biggest challenges: Maintaining the style of the garden and keeping my late wife Carmen’s vision for the garden alive. In the early days, the ponds and lake never provided enough water storage so I expanded them, promising my wife that she’d have enough water to keep the garden going for three years and then it was between her and God. We came close but we’ve never run out.

Favourite part: Being able to take my three sons to the country, after 20 years of beach holidays, and providing them with such a beautiful, tranquil space. It’s lovely walking through it and it changes with every season.

Extras: Garden tours at 2pm. Refreshments available. Funds raised go to Very Special Kids for their Glen Osmond Farm at Woodend.

This weekend is also the Macedon Food and Wine Festival: visit macedonrangeswine.com.au for details.