Pictures at an Exhibition

It was an unusually beautiful morning, the ground wet and cool, the sun shining. My neice is going overseas, and today my family had a lunch to launch her. On my way to my sister's inner-city warehouse space, I decided to stop and wander in the grounds of the Royal Exhibition Building and its surrounding Carlton Gardens. Above, the building's wonderful cupola.

"Completed in 1880 for Melbourne's first international exhibition", this impressively massive building was the first in Australia to achieve world heritage listing. Above, some of its very green and leafy grounds. 

Adjacent to the Central Business District, these broad, orderly and geometrically-alligned gardens have a typically Victorian sense of scale.

Nonetheless, a new branch of the Melbourne Museum has been constructed in its grounds. Above, see part of its wonderfully eye-catching, out of kilter annexe, seeming to sink, as it does, into the ground.

Designed by the multi-award-winning Denton Corker Marshall, like many 21st century buildings, it is striking, and relies for its impact on the conservative or natural background in which it resides.  

Much of the planting around the original building is in the traditional Victorian 'bedding out' style. I'm not normally fond of it, but I tip-toed my way through, and understand how easily such a format or approach lends the viewer a sense of propriety, a sense of surveyance.

There are several fountains on site, including this, above, 'The Exhibition Fountain', designed by Josef Hochgurtel in 1880.

Papyrus, of course, were a Victorian favourite...and water, so rewarding.

The scale is monumental, but Melbourne then was the richest city in the world.

The image above gives you a sense of scale.

It was through these doors that I went for  my final school examinations...impending doom or great promise?

Fortunately, and despite the very Englishness of it all, a number of magnificent native Eucalypts thrive, more ancient than the theatre imposed around them.

See our strong light and the clarity of our blue, blue skies.

One of many fine views, above, on the corner of Rathdowne and Pelham Streets, is this, the Corpus Christi College.

And here, above, the resident gardener's cottage, on the corner of Rathdowne and Carlton Streets. Melbourne's history, however knocked about or dismantled it may have been, is its linchpin.

We do not though, stop, it seems, here, in the Southern Hemisphere. See another section of the new Melbourne Museum, above, bold and brave, with its delectably crooked windows..

My favourite human intervention is this, this statue commemorating the reign if Queen Victoria, with its pair of blonde kangaroos.

Beneath the pair, above, this wonderful plaque of an emu, an exception, surely,  to Victorian discipline, yet a prime example of all the Victorians sought to discover.

The day has been so glorious. I was lucky to have had plenty of time to wander through the gardens, and to make my way to my sister's. 

Her home has this unconventional rooftop sitting space, with views across to all sorts of semi-industrial, reclaimed architecture, bits of roof, stretches of sky.

Here she is, Belinda, on the left, having given us a wonderful lunch of all sorts, with kipfler potatoes and shallots, chicken, broad-beans with leeks, pizza, a most glamorous profiterole thing, and Brillat Savarin and blue Saint Agur cheeses, with an amazing hand-made Limoncello from Adelaide, among other things. My gorgeous neice, Georgia, is in the middle, and my lovely mother is on the right. My brother-in-law, Steve, was off on the side, keeping us entertained.

And that's not all. Here, above, is my gentleman nephew, Lachlan, a most charming and good-natured man.

Good, eh? How often do you get to have a day to explore an inspirational garden and connect with family, and be treated with kid gloves?

Desperado - Gardening Somewhere

 

It's night. It's Friday. I know tomorrow, when I want to go out and direct the making of a sequence of divinely-inspired garden images, I'm going to be lugging an unwieldy wheelbarrow, staggering on my arthritic knees and ripping out metres of couch grass instead.

So I've run around like a mad peacock - not that I'd think such a ridiculously extravagant bird would have anything to do with me ordinarily - and caught some interior images, just before they flew away..

There IS vegetation here, sort of...the point I may want to make is that plants occupy places in our lives left, right and centre, and the notion of being a gardener, to me, is not simply something I do OUTSIDE, but something I take with me, wherever I go... 

Do other gardeners have to feel. or DO feel, that their gardening takes place around them, in other ways? As a concept, 'gardening', to me, is a state of nurturing, involving my relationship with the organic, natural world, even when I'm not outside in what may be recognised as a garden.

Around me I have built, all my life, bowers. I am wondering if some part of me has wings, and is waiting for a moment, whether it be in the garden proper, or in my constructed interior garden, when 'garden' is no longer a matter of being inside or outside. I will fly everywhere, and there will be no fences. Is this a dream of Eden?

Common or Garden?

Today I found this book, 'Common or Garden', but nothing about its author, Tyler Whittle, or Michael Tyler-Whittle, as he is more properly known..
Recommended on its fly-leaf for his "Proustian recollections", "he is informative and prodigal with sound advice on gardening as an art, as a passion, as a source of pleasure...", but who was he? If there's anyone out there who knows any more about this author, I'd be grateful if you'd pass it on.

Published by Willaim Heinemann Ltd. in 1969, the photograph on its dust jacket and across from its title page is by Michael Dempsey, and "was taken in the grounds of Rousham", which, I understand, is one of England's most beautiful gardens.

With chapters such as 'Green Belts and Garters', 'The Chase', 'Conceits and Follies' and 'Wild Gardens', this is a beguiling book by a talented writer with a perceptive mind. I was doubting that I'd find anything good, but suddenly this turned up. Does anyone have any more clues?

Oi, Fitzroy!

In my early twenties my refuge was here, in Melbourne's Fitzroy Gardens.
First set aside as a public space in 1848, and named after Sir Charles Augustus Fitzroy - Governor General of the Australian Colonies 1851-1855 - work began in the 1850s. On a spring day such as this, they are especially gorgeous.

I was on my way to my brother-in-law's birthday at the very fine Flower Drum restaurant. Above is a shot of St Andrews Square, with Parliamentary offices behind it. What a wonderful place to work!

Much of the Gardens are open space, with specimen trees and avenues of trees. There are, however, more private spaces, such as above here, where Wigandia and yellow Iris fringe a pool.

This is the 'Temple of the Winds' rotunda, built in 1873.

A pollarded tree that caught my eye.

A broad view, above, with one of many glorious Hoop Pines ( Araucaria cunninghamii ) on the right. 

While much of Melbourne has changed beyond recognition since my younger days, 'Bishopscourt', the home of the Anglican Archbishop of Melbourne, across the road from the Gardens, remains the same as it has for decades: a mercy.

Above, a pair of striking, native Gymea Lilies ( Doryanthes excelsa ).

Fountains humanise a landscape and let us stop, and find peace beside them.

A view of the nearby, splendid St Patrick's Cathedral.

A wonderful gate tower at the entrance to this most august of Melbourne's Catholic churches, in Lansdowne Street, built of our characteristic bluestone.

A lovely white Azalea, sprawling at a side entrance to the Cathedral.

 

I couldn't resist this, as I wandered to lunch, a vehicle fit for The Thunderbirds' Lady Penelope.*Thankyou, Dave, possibly for a geriatric Lady Penelope.

Nearby, in Burston Reserve, behind the Old Treasury building, is this limpid sculpture, 'Great Petition', by Susan Hewitt and Penelope Lee, representing an 1891 petition presented to parliament "as evidence of support for equal voting rights for women".

 I've only got this here because I liked it, a view opposite the sculpture, and looking into the grounds belonging to Parliament House.

And here it is, Victoria's Parliament House, looking like a bastion of propriety, however much its attendees might well do with some re-orientation in nearby gardens...

Oddly Alluring Books # Eleventy Quillion

Perhaps it's best I took these shots indoors, at night, with my trusty Canon PowerShot G2 - you'd never guess, would you? -  for how else would anyone believe this book wasn't the stuff of dreams?

Published by Peter Garnett, of London, in 1949, Donald McCormick's 'Islands for Sale' advises potential buyers how they may be able to sail to their dreams. I can only assume that after the war, a newfound zeal for freedom encouraged a spirit of exploration. Who, in their right mind, hasn't wanted, at times, to escape to an island? I confess it's been a dream of mine, but one I'm acutely aware cannot happen, and shouldn't...the world hasn't been made for me to have whatever I want; it's here for me to be part of. Islands represent an isolationism, apparently timeless, but possibly stuck in time. 

And my excuse for posting 'Islands for Sale' here, apart from its beguiling oddness, is that gardens too are sorts of islands, but their redemption or redeeming virtue lies in the fact they're alive. However much they might appear to be islands, or isolated, or conceptual, gardens are implanted in a wider landscape. What occurs in them has ramifications outside their fences. And from outside their fences, there comes to the garden-maker a dialogue elucidating values of aspiration.

Kauri Abundant

Queensland Kauri (Agathis robusta) is a gorgeous, coniferous, evergreen tree, and can grow hugely. A member of the ancient Araucariaceae family, it is one of only 21 in its genus. Fashionable in Victorian times, it was often planted as far south as Melbourne in large and institutional gardens.

Living as I did not long ago in Hawthorn close to the Yarra River, I'd often walk with my then dog, 'Ulysses', past Glenferrie Primary School in Manningtree Road. At its entrance stands a slender Kauri, probably planted when the school was built in the 1870s. ( The above photograph is gratefully purloined from the school's website.)

Any number of times I planted seeds from this and other Kauris in the hope of getting one up and going. The specimen above was planted as a seed on the 15th of March, 2002, and sat for a number of years, until it got to be tough enough, on the ledge of my bathroom window.

As soon as it starts to get warm in spring, the tree unfurls its delicate, new, coppery growth, like sea-weed. You can also see the older, leathery leaves, with their hint of a prehistoric past.
Climbing a tilted ladder this morning, dew still on the leaves of the tree, I was hoping to get high enough to take some shots looking down from its apex, but common sense intervened.

I'm proud of this beautiful, 3 metre tree, and hope that it will one day be vast, a reminder of the ancient lineage of our green world, and a pointer towards a more verdant future.