Trees – Avenues January 6, 2020

In recent weeks it has been too hot to be outside after 9.30 am. When I get up, I take Katie for a walk, water and work in the garden until the temperature becomes too uncomfortable for outside activity, then retreat to the cool of the indoors.

So this has been a good opportunity to review my photos. I have decided to publish a short series of posts featuring trees.

This post features avenues of trees.

The Castlemaine Botanical Gardens has avenues of oaks which provide cool, shady walks in summer.

These photos were taken in autumn.

This avenue provides structure and shade in a garden at Lambley Nursery near Creswick.

This avenue leads walkers and motorists up the winding driveway of the Daylesford Botanical Gardens on Wombat Hill.

The avenue of peppercorns at Plaistow near Newstead leads the eye out beyond the gate to paddocks and Joyces Creek.

River Red Gums enhance a walk along Broken Creek in Numurkah.

Temperatures have been cooler over the past two days with Castlemaine being shrouded in a smoke haze today. Smoke from bushfires is reaching New Zealand.

Plaistow Homestead – again November 13, 2019

A friend and I visited Plaistow Homestead on Sunday, 3 November. I had previously visited the garden in early November 2014. With a cooler, wetter spring the garden looked quite different to my first visit when October had been hot and dry. The garden was lusher and flowers still blooming.

These lily pad bird baths are very attractive.

The back garden had a massed display of iris and poppies.

The thorns of this climbing rose were mixing it with the fiercesome thorns of a large cactus.

The property boasts a picturesque outlook down to Joyce’s Creek.

Here is the contrast between 2019 and 2014.

 

Joyces Park, Newstead May 30, 2016

For this post, I am featuring another open garden I visited in spring last year. Joyces Park is one of the Gardens of the Hedge (Horticultural Endeavours Demonstrating Gardening Enthusiasm) which were open for viewing from October, the 31st to November, the 8th 2015.

Joyces Park is a working farm. Farming implements and other bits and pieces gathered over the generations have found their way into the garden.

 

 

Tough, hardy plants which are drought and frost tolerant are a feature of this garden.

 

 

 

 

 

There were beautiful blooms to enjoy.

 

 

I liked the humorous touches. Perhaps a stray Yeti had wandered into the garden.

 

 

 

 

Plaistow Homestead – Joyces Creek November 10, 2014

 

 

Yippeee! It’s been Festival of Gardens time in Castlemaine and district from the 1st to the 9th of November. So there’ll be a few posts devoted to the gardens I visited over the next few weeks.

The Festival is held every two years. Twenty two gardens were listed in the official program and six gardens in the HEDGE – Horticultural Endeavours Demonstrating Gardening Enthusiasm – program. Yes, even a Garden Festival has a fringe.

I visited Plaistow, one of the HEDGE gardens, on Saturday, the 8th of November on a windy, hot day perfect for wandering around a property which has shady verandahs and trees.

This heritage listed property was settled in the early 1840s before the madness of the gold rushes. There is a rambling garden created for the pleasure of the owners and to supply the kitchen with fruit and vegetables.

I visited the garden about a month too late as the spring flowers had died, shrivelled or gone to seed. So I needed to focus on features other than a spring floral display.

 

How many of us have one of these parked on our verandahs?

 

 A sunny courtyard provides a sheltered retreat.

 

 

An avenue of old peppercorn trees leads down to the creek and the paddocks.

 

This is what lies beyond the garden fence.

 

 I think this is the oldest olive tree I have seen with its spreading branches and gnarled trunk.