Lost gardens are not like lost weekends, to be kept secret. Lost Gardens of Sydney, by Colleen Morris, had me anticipating visits to Sydney, my birthplace, on which previously unknown gardens would be discovered. However, most of the gardens in this well-researched book are gone forever, lost to urban development and real estate subdivisions, and only remnants remain.
Garden history buffs can compare that situation with Canberra. Two gardens were considered worthy of inclusion in John Patrick's The Australian Garden (1975), those of Sir Harold and Lady White in Mugga Way, and Polly and Peter Park, both surrounded bungalows in Red Hill. Now one is dominated by a residence, the other razed to bare earth. Morris, who is married to a Canberran and knew both gardens, gasped to hear that news and noted that gardens were so fragile.
The book was launched earlier this month by Dr Peter Valder and it accompanies an exhibition, curated by the author, at the Museum of Sydney. Morris has undertaken conservation studies at Sydney's Government House, the Domain and Royal Botanic Gardens. She is national chair of the Australian Garden History Society and has written about colonial cultural landscapes of the Cumberland Plain which is her great passion. Morris grew up near there, at Picton, and says the plain now has swathes of urban subdivisions, cheek-by-jowl houses with no eaves.
A chapter is devoted to the legacy of Hardy Wilson who called gardens between Camden and Parramatta bewitching, as is his drawing of The Great Apple-oak of Cobbitty. His evocative 1920 map of the idyllic Cow Pasture Road depicts beehives, chooks, grapes, cows and sheep, a satyr's head blowing a west wind, aqueducts and creeks. Dreamy scenes from Hardy Wilson's own garden of Purulia at Wahroonga were photographed in 1932 by Harold Cazneaux. Morris reflects on him sitting, writing, by his window looking southward beyond olives and oleanders in the garden to the city of Sydney spreading to the horizon.
Black and white photographs by Max Dupain, art deco shots of the roof garden at Feltex House, and a family taking afternoon tea in the garden at Withycombe in Hurstville are delectable but, for those who like a bit of colour, there are botanical illustrations and floral albums.
The picturesque is explored through Elizabeth Bay House, well known today and visited through the Historic Houses Trust, but it is the original garden which Morris wishes she could see. The remnants of carving and sandstone are quite beautiful before the 1969 demolition, and the photo opposite the preface of the balustrading and gargoyles is quite something. Macleay planned the garden looking to the bay, he left indigenous vegetation and understood the philosophical botanic garden concept, she says.
Tempe Estate is on Cooks River which flows past Sydney Airport and into Botany Bay. There, in 1829, Alexander Brodie Spark grew guava and mulberry from cuttings obtained from the Botanic Gardens and dragon tree, passion-flower, lime, coral and Indian rubber trees. From across the river, Conrad Martens painted the scene which prompted Lady Jane Franklin to visit the estate. In 1883 Tempe was bought by the Sisters of the Good Samaritan who owned the property for over a century and used it as a women's refuge. Tempe House has been conserved but is dwarfed to the south and west by apartment buildings, yet now I want see it.
Among villa gardens are riverfront Drummoyne House photographed in 1859 by Professor John Smith and said to be a fitting resting place for one of the merchant princes of the day, William Wright. The house was filled with wooden carvings of flowers and fruit gathered from the kitchen garden, orchard and pleasure ground. Rock cistus grew near the wharf, selected eucalypts were retained between the lawn and the river, and a jacaranda framed the croquet lawn. The first subdivisions of the estate were offered in 1882 and the house and garden fell to high-rise development by 1971. Now you can take the river cat up the Parramatta River to see the balustrades and stairs that led to the Drummoyne House jetty near Wrights Point.
For 100 years an avenue of Norfolk Island pines on the property Annandale was a landmark for travellers as they journeyed along the road to Parramatta. The seeds were thought to have been given to then captain-lieutenant of the NSW Corps, George Johnston, by Captain (later Governor) John Hunter on Norfolk Island in 1790. The senescing pines were cut down in 1904 before the demolition of Johnston's house and garden with its geometric beds and broad paths, seen in photographs taken in 1901, to be replaced, Morris says, with terrace houses which are now of historic interest in their own right. Her children attend Annandale Public School on the boulevard of Johnston Street, Annandale, where the stone gateposts from the original property were re-erected in 1988.
Then there are the harbourside mansions. The book opens with a panorama of Rose Bay and Point Piper where I lived for 21 years. I could take you to historic sandstone walls, ancient araucarias and huge old camellia bushes, but it took the chapter on olives, vines and Norfolk pines to introduce me to terraced slopes of the Mt Adelaide vineyard above Double Bay laid out by nurseryman Thomas Shepherd in the 1830s.
A decade ago a large group of Canberra garden groupies was invited to the grounds of HMAS Kuttabul, site of the mansion Clarens and its garden which Morris would have loved to see in its heyday. James Martin was quite eccentric and had a sense of humour and the place was quite quirky. It has just been filmed for Stateline on ABC2 and gardener Jack Gibbs, who retired in 1998, came up by train from Engadine to see his work. The navy is incredibly proud of it and medal ceremonies are held on the top level. It is a great recovery story and people like to see something tangible, she says.
A fascinating inclusion in the book is the highly cultured, shy and modest Professor Arthur Sadler who lectured in Japan before becoming professor of oriental studies at the University of Sydney in 1922. The Sadlers' house and garden, Rivenhall in the Australian hills of Warrawee, mixed the latest English trends like an iris pond and rill in the water garden with traditional Japanese ideas. He wrote about the tea ceremony and constructed a tea garden with the quiet living green of bamboos. He despaired at the general Australian love of horticulture and the desire that nothing shall be concealed from the passer-by.
Sadler influenced many students, including architecture students, in an understanding of Japanese aesthetics and one of them now owns the Sadler residence of Rivenhall. Another student was former Canberran Professor Richard Clough, first landscape architect with the National Capital Development Commission whose planning works included Woden, Weston Creek and Belconnen, and design projects that included Anzac Parade, the National Library, Lake Burley Griffin and surrounding parklands and Lake Ginninderra.
Morris believes Clough's vision around the lake, particularly the central section, and his wonderful landscape spaces are among the drawcards and beauties of Canberra and should not be filled up with buildings. She says the challenge in Canberra is to adapt gardens to a much lower water regime, not to lose heart, so gardens and green spaces remain as crucial elements in our lifestyle.
Lost Gardens of Sydney. By Colleen Morris. Historic Houses Trust/Thames and Hudson. 160pp. $49.95.
Lost gardens of Sydney is at the Museum of Sydney until November 30. Tickets: $10 adult, $5 child/concession, $20 family, members free. Open daily 9.30am- 5pm. Corner Phillip and Bridge streets, Sydney. Ph: 92515988.