Visiting the Forest Glade Gardens on Mount Macedon in summer

Forest Glade Gardens in summer 2014

Towards the end of last summer I took some visitors from England up to Mount Macedon to view a garden. I remember looking on the open gardens website and seeing that nothing was on offer up there on that particular weekend. That being the case I knew that there are always a few gardens that are open for viewing as these particular ones are open every weekend. We decided to visit Forest Glade. I didn't know anything about Forest Glade and for some stupid reason thought that because the garden was open all the time and not part of the open garden scheme openings that it would be a bit sub standard. How wrong I was. Forest Glade is a huge garden (14 acres) and has 4 different areas. Those areas are an English garden, a woodland garden, a Japanese garden and a cool fern gully. The gardens were very well maintained and unbelievably green considering I was there in the middle of a really hot spell (I'm pretty sure this was only a week after we had that run of 40+ Celsius days). The gardens also have lots of sculptures placed here and there. One of the great things about living in Macedon how the trees colour up so vibrantly during Autumn so I'm definitely going back there in a few weeks.

This is the first view you experience upon entering the gardens. Believe me the shade was a godsend on the 30+ Celsius day I was there.

I love these pavilions (there must be a more accurate word for them). 

One of many sculptures throughout the gardens. This one is near the front.

Top view of the topiary area.

Arum lillies growing in a cascading water feature at the top of the topiary garden. 

So much box hedge. These big gardens on the Mountains are full of hedging.

Topiary swan

Bear and giraffe all neatly clipped

The next 4 pictures are of spectacular dahlias that were growing in a herbaceous bed. They are such showy flowers. I really need to get some for my garden at home.

The remainder of the photographs are of the Japanese garden. This really was an impressive part of the gardens. Its probably has to be the largest section of Japanese garden I have seen in Victoria to this day.

Wow look at that circular passageway.

Pond area complete with stepping stones and massive goldfish.

This small path was really cute. It wasn't anywhere near big enough for any person to walk though. I'm guessing it was a water feature as it runs into the pond area.

Bonsai house.

The Royal Botanic Gardens in Melbourne Australia are under attack!

I visited the Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne a couple of days ago and saw, amongst other things, damage that has been inflicted on trees and cacti by vandals. Probably the saddest sight was the Separation Tree which is a heritage tree that existed before Europeans colonized Australia.

The Separation Tree is named so because it is where citizens gathered to celebrate state of Victoria separating from the state of New South Wales in 1850. It also holds cultural significance for people indigenous to the area. It is a river redgum and is over 400 years old. The tree was ring barked back in 2010 and had survived by a technique called 'bridge grafting' where redgum sapling bark is grafted across the damaged area, thereby bridging the ring barking allowing energy photosynthesized by the leaves in the canopy to reach the tree's roots. Without the bridge grafts energy cannot be sent to the trees roots and they die. The dead roots cannot send water and nutrients up to the canopy and the canopy then dies. Needless to say it angers me and others to see it attacked once more as even with the bridge grafts the tree was still struggling to stay alive.

The most recent attack was on the 21st of July and amazingly it followed another attack which was on the area in the gardens known as 'Guilfoyle's Volcano' on July the 5th. Guilfoyles volcano is an area planted out with succulents and cacti. When I visited it the damaged plants were nearly all replaced but it didn't look quite as grand as many of the plants were smaller than the originals. Below is a link to a news report showing some of the scale of the damage to the cacti and succulents. In that attack most of the large plants in the succulent garden were damaged.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-06-05/vandals-destroy-rare-cacti-in-royal-botanic-gardens/4735616

The attacks have prompted calls for better security to be installed to protect the gardens. The gardens CEO however, has stated  ''In the end though, the gardens can not, and should not, be a high-security compound" and also ''We seem to have a problem with a small number of individuals who have no regard for the importance of these trees and the significance of the gardens". If more attacks occur I personally think that tighter security is necessary and should be used.

The Separation Tree as I saw it on my visit. The hessian covers sphagnum moss in an effort to assist healing. I'm guessing that the moss is only a temporary measure and that bridge grafting will again take place.

Another victim, this time a spotted gum.

Sign of the times.

Attempted ring barking. I wonder whether they were disturbed and ran or if they just got tired and stopped?

This is the succulent garden that surrounds a water reservoir called 'Guilfoyle's Volcano' (not a real volcano of course).

The succulent garden was looking leaner than usual but impressive nonetheless.

More evidence of vandalism.

 'Guilfoyles Volcano' was built in 1876 to store water for the gardens. For 60 years it was left idle but has now been restored. William Guilfoyle become the second director of the Royal Botanic Gardens in Melbourne in 1873 succeeding Ferdinand Von Mueller. He radically changed the gardens and made them more ornamental and scenic as opposed to Von Mueller's vision which was more of a systems garden. Below are pictures of the top of the volcano. 

Visit to the historical Cameron Lodge Botanical Gardens in Mount Macedon

Last weekend I visited the Cameron Lodge gardens in Mount Macedon near my home and they didn't fail to impress. Originally built in 1886 it was names 'Rahiri'. In 1916 It was purchased by William Cameron who has the director of British American Tobacco who renamed it Cameron Lodge. William Cameron was the one who commissioned the landscaping work on the property and is thereby credited with creating the gardens. Cameron Lodge is one of the luck properties that survived the Ash Wednesday bushfires in the 1980s so there are lots of large established trees such as a Giant Sequoia, Pin Oaks, Oriental Spruce, Japanese Maples, English Elm and Copper Beech. In my opinion the highlight of the gardens is a structure build in 1932 called the 'Temple of the Winds' which is a pillared structure surrounded in the middle of a large pond. You need to step over small stepping stones to get to it. The garden also contains a potager (picking / vegetable garden) with beds bordered by box hedge and the whole potager surrounded by a large holly hedge. Cameron Lodge is a massive garden of several hectares and as such it has 2 full time gardeners and 1 full time hedger. Topiary and hedges play a massive part in the design of the garden to the point where a service driveway hundreds of metres long is completely hidden by huge hedges which run its entire length. Cameron Lodge is a really beautiful and huge garden and I highly recommend visiting on one of its open days. It is part of the open gardens scheme in Victoria. 

The sound of this fountain is audible from the entrance and its head peeks over the top of a hedge.

This is the pittosporum hedge which forms the front border of the property.

Box hedge creating the border for this garden bed. A theme repeated throughout the garden.

A view of the front fountain in its entirety.

The main residence of Cameron Lodge. Although a large house I liked the fact that it was a bit less monstrous in terms of height compared to some of the Mount Macedon properties. 

View from the main residence looking toward the back of the property.

View of garden beds on the side of the main residence.

Some topiary near the smaller cottage in the middle of the gardens.

One thing I gained from the visit was an appreciation of Holly like this nice variegated specimen.

There were lots of trees in the garden and lots of nice shadows cast across the paths.

View of the 'Temple of the winds'

One of several elephants in the pond surrounding the temple.

The stepping stones which are the only way to get to the temple.

View from the temple looking across the pond which surrounds it.

The maples were just starting to colour up for Autumn.

These 'Roman Baths' are one of the features that were recently restored.

This pergola was enveloped by Wisteria.

This is part of the long driveway which is hidden by hedges. You can see why they need a full time hedger.

One of the herbaceous beds.

Vegetable beds in the potager. They were a bit lacking in produce but that may be indicative of the season.

These Dahlias were also in the potager probably grown for picking and display in the house.

More Autumn colour showing in the trees

Some stone steps near the middle of the gardens. The property is quite steep in parts, the gardeners must be fit from all the uphill walking they need to do.