By Callum Ludwig
The Upper Yarra Valley Garden Club’s (UYVGC) annual Open Weekend is coming up, with new gardens across the region to open up over Melbourne Cup Weekend.
Five gardens will be on display for a small fee to see, three of which have never been featured in an open weekend prior and two of which haven’t been displayed for over a year.
Former UYVGC President and long-time member Kevin Hince said all the gardens are relatively new and different to previous years.
“The closest one to town is Seville which I’m at at the moment and the last one’s at Wesburn, so they cover a fair area,” he said.
“The one I’m at at the moment is 15 acres, but they go right down to a normal house lot in Yarra Junction, they are all very different and with different owners.”
The Open Gardens will be available to visit on Saturday 2 and Sunday 3 November and attendees can pay a full $25 for access to all five gardens or $5 for each they would like to visit. Children under 16 can enter for free.
Mr Hince said each year they encourage any of their members top open their gardens up, because it gives them something to work on their gardens for.
“The one I’m in at the moment, has a beautiful view across the Dandenongs and towards the Valley, with lot of very interesting and rare plants in it, we just had the Creswick Garden Club here, it’s a very popular garden that was on Gardening Australia a few weeks back,” he said.
“The next one down is a very new garden, it’s only been there three years and it’s a garden in development and just around the corner, there’s two almost side-by-side; one’s been open quite a few times with a very nice, well laid-out maintained garden with a lot of vegetables in it, the owner there is a tomato expert so people might learn something there,”
“Another one is a very new garden to it but it’s a big one-acre block, nicely laid out, with a nice little pond, we’ve got a very new garden person that has only just joined the garden club and has two or three acres of roses and iris, it’s very spectacular with big lakes and waterfalls and a very big farm garden with horses and the lot.”
Each garden will be open from 10am to 4.30pm each day. Entry passes are available at any garden and you can start your tour anywhere and just follow the signs along the Warburton Highway.
Toilets are not available at any garden but there are public toilets in townships along the way. Dogs are only allowed entry with permission of the garden owner and must be on a lead.
Attendees are also encouraged to visit the Warburton Community Garden as well.
The addresses for the five gardens are as follows:
Heywood House, 50 Linwood Road, Seville.
54 Braeside Drive, Launching Place.
17 Cairncroft Avenue, Launching Place.
120 Lowes Road, Yarra Junction.
13 Greenridge Court, Wesburn.
