Best Australian gardens: Mayfield, Windyridge, Cruden Farm, Stonefields
Take a stroll through the bountiful grounds of these manicured plots.
Windyridge Mount Wilson, NSW
In 1995, third-generation nurseryman Rodger Davidson and his irrepressible wife Wai purchased an 1877 property in the historic gardening enclave of Mount Wilson in the Blue Mountains to house their enormous collection of cool climate plants. With the help of landscape architect Gordon Sykes, Wai began creating a garden on a grand scale, planting tens of thousands of shrubs and bulbs, more than 2000 azaleas, 400 Japanese maples and countless magnolias. The garden includes a woodland walk, sunken parterre and stunning lake and waterfall cuffed with variegated iris, gunnera (giant rhubarb) and other water loving plants. Visit late October when thousands of peonies are in flower.
Stonefields, Denver, Victoria
The calling card for acclaimed garden designer Paul Bangay, Stonefields is a masterclass for budding landscape architects and weekend gardeners alike. Hedged garden rooms lead one to the other, revealing immaculately clipped topiary cubes and drums speckled with thousands of white tulips in spring, a romantic apple walk, walled rose garden and stunning cascade featuring uniquely Australian garden sculpture. If you’re not paying attention, those curled snakes in bronze can seem rather too real. With long views to the Victorian highlands, the garden continues to evolve with young oak trees establishing in the neat paddocks. This is Bangay’s private sanctuary, however guests of the property’s Farmhouse B&B are welcome to book a tour of the grounds.
Paronella Park, Mena Creek, Queensland
Picturesque ruins are a trope of the English gardening tradition, not so much in tropical Queensland. Yet 90 minutes’ drive south of Cairns, beside the dramatic Mena Creek Falls, a mysterious castle built by Spaniard Jose Paronella in the Catalan style almost a century ago is slowly dissolving into the garden he planted. Like something out of Raiders of the Lost Ark, the romantic, moss-encrusted folly has managed to survive floods and cyclones, and feels far more ancient than its 100 years. More than 7000 trees, including Indian teak, weeping figs, red cedars and an impressive avenue of Queensland kauri pines, form the backbone of the lush garden.
Cloudehill, Olinda, Victoria
Inheriting a wealth of established trees and naturalised bulbs from an old flower farm that once stood on this site high in the Dandenongs, Cloudehill has been developed over almost three decades by Jeremy and Valerie Francis into a world-class garden. With striking mixed borders and hedged garden rooms in the English tradition, this garden celebrates the seasons but is especially lovely in autumn. From the water garden flanked by hornbeam hedges and oakleaf hydrangeas to the peony pavilion and beech walk, to the impressive mixed borders planted in warm and cool colours, there is so much to enchant, even in winter.
Mayfield, Oberon, NSW
One of the largest privately owned cool-climate gardens in the world, Mayfield reminds you of the grand Victorian spreads created by green-thumbed industrialists in Britain in the late 19th century. Everything is outsize, the 2.5ha water garden and impressive cascade, vast maple collection, long hydrangea walk and the Valley of the Five Ponds with linking rill and meadow plantings of seasonal bulbs. The 16ha Mayfield adjoins the private 49ha garden of its owners, the Sydney-based Hawkins family, open four times a year. It is even more ambitious (think Versailles) with a maze, 80m high cascade, parterres and impressive orchards and cutting gardens.
Cruden Farm, Langwarrin, Victoria
One of Australia’s best-loved gardens, Cruden was created over an astonishing 80 years by Dame Elisabeth Murdoch. Few people, English gardening celebrity Monty Don noted, garden long enough to see acorns they plant grow into giant trees. Dame Elisabeth began creating the grounds in the 1930s and worked mostly alone until the 70s, when a young Michael Morrison joined her every Sunday to lend a hand. For the following four decades “gardener number 2” Michael worked alongside Dame Elisabeth as they developed the site. From the iconic avenue of lemon-scented gum trees to the walled garden, originally designed by Edna Walling but overhauled by Dame Elisabeth, the pretty lake and cutting garden, Cruden Farm has inspired and influenced a generation of Australian designers.
Paul Bangay Garden, Barossa Valley Estate, South Australia
Gardens are becoming an increasingly important element of the cellar-door experience. The owners of Barossa Estate closed their cellar door for several years while Australia’s best known landscape architect Paul Bangay developed a stunning perennial garden (apparently Australia’s largest) with fantastic views from a hillside site across the valley’s vines. Free-flowing beds stuffed with flowering perennials adapted to South Australia’s hot dry summers. Salvias, geraniums and agastaches contrast with a formal allee of plane trees and clipped balls of lavender. Tables are set beneath the pergola for wine tasting alfresco. Open seven days.
Old WesleyDale, Mole Creek, Tasmania
Tucked away in magical Mole Creek in the heart of devil country, Old WesleyDale is a labour of love for Deb and Scott Wilson. Set behind a large lake, ha-ha and 1830 Georgian farmhouse, an English idyll unfolds. There are sheets of hydrangeas with blooms the size of basket balls, colourful ranks of dahlias nodding in the sun, whimsical topiary and frothy pink yarrow a metre high. Scott is not only a master of the drystone wall but expert hedge layer and topiarist. Beds heaving with flowers are interspersed with clipped box in bewitching shapes such as urns, spirals and cloud trees. Tours by appointment. Guests of the onsite B&B cottage have run of the garden.
Western Australia’s Wildflower Country
Australia’s largest and most impressive garden has no designer and no lawn, just millions of flowering plants, about 12,000 species. WA’s wildflowers represent one of the largest collections on earth, 60 per cent of species endemic to the state. The season begins in June in the north and slowly spreads south to wrap on the south coast in November. Perth has downtown locales, including Kings Park and Botanic Garden. Or follow the 309km Wildflower Way from Dalwallinu in the south to Geraldton in the north, with 21 interpretive sites along the way. Sheets of everlastings and cornflowers, dainty native orchids, pretty mulla mullas and fringed lilies paint an unforgettable picture on the sands.
Wendy’s Secret Garden, Lavender Bay, Sydney
Following the death of her husband, artist Brett Whiteley, in 1992, Wendy set about clearing the abandoned, rubbish-filled old railway land in the valley below her house on Sydney Harbour. The garden she created as a means of dealing with her grief has become one of Sydney’s favourites for its painterly elegance, tranquillity and hidden harbourside locale. A zig-zag path winds beneath large trees and jungle-like plantings dotted with sculptures and found objects. Without a sign pointing to its existence, this garden really does feel like a secret, hidden away in the Lavender Bay Parklands.
