Award winning extensive formal gardens of Sunnymeade.

One of Australia’s best kept secrets!

Experience  the delights of Sunnymeade Garden, 1998 winner of Your Garden magazine Australia  and New Zealand Garden of the Year competition and featured in Vogue Living  magazine 1999 and Australian Country Style magazine January/February 2001.

Hidden away in the picturesque tableland of the Strathbogie ranges, just over 2 hours drive from Melbourne in Victoria's north east, in an area once roamed by the infamous bushranger Ned Kelly but now known for its cool climate vineyards, fine wool and fruit production, you will find Sunnymeade.

A  series of inter-connecting rooms, each with its individual atmosphere or  planting is a style popularised by the best 20th century formal gardens such as  Hidcote or Sissinghurst. But if you transpose that style to rural Australia, add  endless imagination, 20 years of hard work and the best selection of plants  available worldwide, you achieve an enchanting garden such as Sunnymeade.

Once through the gate a border of perennials punctuated by four mop-top robinias, invites you on. Clematis sprawls amongst herbaceous peonies, foxgloves and roses. The legendary mandrake, with its broad leaves and fleshy yellow fruits favoured in myth and magic largely because its shape resembled a human figure and said to utter a shriek when dug up, that if heard meant death, grows here. 

Leaving  superstition behind, a path entices you onward in this section of the garden to a lawned area enclosed by hornbeam Carpinus betulus a deciduous tree from  Europe, to a vista terminating at each end with 18th century trompe l'oeil  figures leading in one direction to a Persian style garden  with a central  raised pond and pavilion with brilliantly coloured flowers and exotic foliage,  soon to be completed. In the other direction is a Yellow Garden.

At its centre  point is an arbour of wisteria heavily laden with flowers in late Spring. An  archway through a sandstone wall reveals a garden of old roses enclosed on one  side with a hedge of purple and green beech, Fagus sylvatica with a focal  point of a Victorian era wrought iron and lace gazebo overlooking a box parterreof swirls and curlicues. 

Passing through a stone arch of local granite you cross the driveway to a sunken garden of hot colours in front of the Colonial Georgian sandstone residence. Wide sandstone steps lead onto a lawn bordered with purple and blue flowers. Featured in this garden is a decorative metal screen clothed in clematis and roses creating a sheet of colour. Here also grows a wonderful specimen of Tibetian cherry Prunus serrula, displaying its trunk looking like polished mahogany. 

The eye is led on by a distant large ornate urn and approaching this is a circular lawn enclosed by holly hedges. After the abundance of previous areas this room is a restful epilogue giving the mind a chance to quieten before venturing on.

 Several paths lead from here, back to the drive through a charming Gothic style stone building, through a shady pleached hornbeam walk under-planted with Cyclamen hederifolium to glimpses of colourful perennials, or towards the ornate urn. Reaching the urn at the end of the main vista from the house a path passes through beds resplendent with peonies, lupin, iris, standard wisterias and punctuated by the towering spires of Echium pininana from the Canary Islands.

The highlight of summer at Sunnymeade is reached next, a border beckoning colour planted on the principles of Gertrude Jekyll, a famous English gardener who perfected the art of using colour harmonies. The border starts with whites and silvers, follows on to pinks, blues and purples and culminates in reds and yellows then reverses through the previous colours back to white.

A  garden tower with a peaked roof and balcony provides an attractive backdrop for  this area. Passing on to a pond and formal parterre an opening in the border  reveals a fine view of the surrounding 4 hectare vineyard to Mt Wombat beyond.

A laburnum tunnel under-planted with winter and spring bulbs including many different galanthus, Cyclamen coum, fritillarias and crocus leads to the fruit and vegetable garden. A tunnel supports 30 different old apple varieties with a framework of espaliered pears on one side.

At the rear of the residence there is a small nursery selling rare and unusual perennials. For those who'd like to experience the garden to themselves there is a charming B&B sandstone cottage available.

Sunnymeade is a garden incorporating many ideas and themes, designed to enchant the less
knowledgeable visitor and to tantalize the plantsman.

"The best garden I've seen in Australia." Trevor Nottle, garden writer and historian.

The garden is open to groups of 20 or more for garden tours by appointment.

Open Garden Days 2009:

Sunnymeade garden open garden days for 2009 will be advised at a later date

To make an enquiry about a garden tour or to make a garden tour group booking contact Craig Irving on 03 5790 8519, by facsimile on 03 5790 8518 or by E-mail at:
                                                      garden@sunnymeade.com.au                            

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