Heronswood is the home of The Digger’s Club and its garden is a living catalogue of all the evergreen fruits and vegetables described in our catalogues and books. We have over 50 sub-tropical fruits integrated within our flower borders.
At Heronswood we have five separate vegetable gardens and it is within these gardens we have rescued the best heirloom vegetables. The garden has extensive plantings of flowers, including perennial borders, dry climate and cottage, annual gardens. We have replaced subtropical camellias, with avocados as edible hedges. Much of the delicious food we grow in the garden is served in our Fork to Fork restaurant so not only can you see all the wonderful and rare foods growing but you can taste them too.
A feature of our garden is the integration of vegetables and flowers, with fruit and herbs. This interplanting prevents the build up of pest problems, because we have simulated natural plant diversity; we never spray because we don't need to. We don't buy fertilizers, instead composts and mulches are used. If you come and visit Heronswood don’t be intimidated by the standard of gardening, our gardens are managed with a staff of three. Considering the area is equivalent to 25 house blocks, this equates to only five hours work each week for the typical gardener. To live in a beautiful garden and be self-sufficient is a wonderful reward for so little effort. Our gardens are water efficient in that we have cut our water use by 60% in the last 3 years.
Listed in the Oxford Companion to Gardens as one of only four Victorian gardens, alongside the Melbourne Botanical Gardens, Mawallock and Ripponlea.
Just 70 minutes from Melbourne
Garden shop 03 5984 7321
Dining (open everyday 10-4)
03 5984 7318 bookings essential
The first law professor at Melbourne University, William Hearn, employed Edward Latrobe Bateman to design Heronswood house in 1866. The property’s name was probably derived from Hearn’s family motto, the heron seeks the height, or his family crest, on a mount vert, a heron. Or it could be a contraction of ‘Hearn’s wood’.
Justice Higgins, a Federal Attorney General, was the third owner. He wrote the harvester judgement, which formed the basis of our arbitration system at Heronswood.
The architectural style of the house has been called Gothic Revival. It is made from coursed, squared granite blocks quarried at Arthur’s Seat. The windows, doors and corners are dressed with limestone from the southern end of the peninsula. It features many medieval-inspired elements such as the bell-cast roofs covered in Welsh slate, pointed lancet windows, and buttressing on the front porch. This is in sharp contrast to the elegant symmetry of the neoclassical style seen in buildings like Werribee Park (1876). Each room of Heronswood has its own high-pitched roof, lending the house the imposing air of a castle. But it was conceived primarily as a family home and inside it is quite intimate.
