By Renee Wood
Although you may have had months of potentially pottering around in your own gardens, there’s still nothing quite like visiting an open garden and drawing inspiration from magnificent displays created by green thumbs.
Now for all local garden gurus can return to events, with Open Gardens Victoria announcing its return as restrictions ease on outside gatherings.
Chair Liz Fazio said the organisation is very excited for its long-awaited return, holding events through to December.
“It’s been a long pause for us, we stopped opening in March 2020. We have had a few that we managed to open in the autumn season this year but we’ve had so many sort of false starts,” Ms Fazio said.
Two gardens in the Yarra Valley will be some of the first to be showcased November 6 and 7 at Ridgefield in Coldstream and Bentwood in Gruyere.
“I think particularly when we’ve all being waiting for each other’s company, it’s going to be a lovely way of being outside together.”
Visitors to Ridgefield are invited to stop and smell the roses, with 450 bushes to take in on the property.
There’s also structural elements, a birch walk down to the crab apple lawn and views to get lost in are other features of the garden that was originally designed by Robert Boyle in 1997.
“The whole ethos of the design was to preserve the views as much as possible, but give some windbreaks to the garden because it is quite a windy site.
“Deep beds filled with shrubs and drought tolerant perennials surround the house and a series of Mediterranean.”
On the same weekend, Bentwood in Gruyere will also be open to the public.
The owners have developed the property into a gardeners wonderland since taking ownership of the hundred year old home in 2000.
‘It’s a garden that reflects the owners taste so it’s been influenced by gardens they’ve visited in Australia and overseas, they lived overseas for a while.
“It gets very wet in winter and very dry in summer, it hasn’t got lots of additional water so they’ve managed to do well by building up the soil and by choosing plants that will do well. It uses hedges for framing the landscapes and it’s got lots of different sorts of hedges.”
Low maintenance, soil health and plant choice all important to the owner – recycled structures and sculptures also add to the atmosphere of the garden.
An art exhibition and a beekeepers talk will be held at Bentwood and there’s also a micro flower farm tucked away in the paddock visitors can admire.
Until the gardens open, there’s still plenty of online content on the Open Gardens website, the organisation kept busy through the lockdowns by bolstering its online presence.
“I’ve actually been quite amazed that for a voluntary organisation, we’ve managed to do lots of things in the meanwhile.
“We’ve done online things like having competitions, plant of the month, we introduced the kids corner and last year we did a whole series of virtual garden tools, which were absolutely fantastic.”
The new form of online education could take on a new life within the organisation after the pandemic.
“So that’s going to be an ongoing part of our program and it’s got the benefits that people who might not be able to get to an open garden can go online and get taught gardening skills, so it’s just another string to our bow and we see it as an ongoing important part of the program.”
For those attending the open gardens, please visit https://opengardensvictoria.org.au/coming-open-gardens to find out more about tickets and state requirements.
