|
|
Heronswood garden
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 slow food café so not only can you see all the wonderful and rare foods growing but you can taste them too.
Just 70 minutes from Melbourne |
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.
Garden and retail shop open everyday 9-5. Cafe open everyday 10-4.
Address: 105 Latrobe Parade, Dromana. Melways ref: 159 C9
Garden shop 03 5984 7321 Dining 03 5984 7318 (bookings essential)
General/Mail order enquiries 03 5984 7900
St Erth |
Heronswood house 1864
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. |
Heronswood’s first gardens were planted in the 1870s, remnants of which can still be seen. In the valley, the old mulberry and orchard trees still bear fruit, the Moreton Bay Fig frames the house, and the Cook’s Pine by the duck pond is now registered by the National Trust as a Significant Tree.
The buildings of Heronswood were classified by the National Trust in 1973 and placed on the Register of the National Estate in 1978. In 1987 Penny and Clive Blazey, the present owners placed Heronswood on the Historic Buildings Register.
House open 3 days per year on Melbourne Cup day and Harvest Festival weekend on April 5-6
|
|
The Garden of St Erth
The Garden of St Erth features an extraordinary range of plants from around the world. Thousands of naturalised daffodils carpet the lawns in September, and through the summer months the herbaceous border features Digger’s perennials and grasses. The garden culminates in an extravagant display in March for our Fruit and Flower festival. May marks the end of our gardening year with a blaze of autumn-coloured trees and late perennials.
Cocooned in the Wombat State Forest, the bush garden plays host to a variety of native birds, as well as being a place of restful contemplation. The natural spring of Koban’s pool is a cool place to escape the summer heat.
|
The Garden of St Erth is also a garden of plenty, with fruit trees and food plants, espaliered heirloom fruit trees and a permaculture-style food forest.
The Digger’s Club is committed to sustainable gardening and visitors will find inspirational ideas for gardening organically, becoming more self-sufficient and saving precious water while still enjoying nature’s bounty. We are continually refining the garden, looking towards a greener future. As the previous owner, Tommy Garnett, once wrote, “No garden is ever finished, for gardens are apt to be transitory creations”. We hope you enjoy your visit to the Garden of St Erth.
Come and visit, it's just 70 minutes from Melbourne and 40 minutes from Daylesford and Ballarat.
Open 9-5pm everyday (closed December 24-26).
Address: Simmons Reef Road, Blackwood, VIC.
Melways ref: map 609(or 909) E11
Phone: (03) 5368 6514
|
History of St Erth
In 1854 Matthew Rogers, a Cornish stonemason, left Sydney in pursuit of gold discovered near Mount Blackwood in Victoria. In the 1860s he built a sandstone cottage, naming it ‘St Erth’ after his birthplace in Cornwall.
Rogers attached a wooden building to the western end of his stone cottage which served as a post office and store. Behind it was a boot factory that formed part of a bustling town of 13,000 people. His daughter Elizabeth and her husband Jim Terrill continued at the store, but as gold ran out, the wooden buildings of the town were moved to Trentham. For a time the house lay empty and the bush moved back in. Eventually it was bought by a group of Melbourne businessmen who called themselves the Simmons Reef Shire Council.
 |
The property then passed to Ken and Lucy McClennan who planted an orchard in the 1930s and then to Reg Bradley, a violinist in the Victorian Symphony Orchestra, in 1949. His family planted hundreds of daffodils, built a poultry shed, and planted the large Pin Oak in the nursery in 1952.
In 1967 the Garnett family bought St Erth as a holiday place. They moved into permanent residence at the end of 1973 and began to develop the garden.
Covering two and a half hectares and containing over 3,000 varieties of plants, it is a garden of surprises, colour, scent and pleasing views of rare plants. The Digger’s Club took over the garden in 1996 on the retirement of Tom and Penny Garnett, and set about restoring the miner’s cottage to display Digger’s seeds, bulbs and books. The retail nursery has been enlarged to display Digger’s perennials, trees, shrubs and food plants.
Back to top |
|
|
