GREEN CHANGE
GARDEN
Tour the grounds of Bank House in Newlyn, Victoria.
FIFTEEN YEARS AGO, when Sydney residents Andrew Lowth and Nigel Smith decided they wanted to create a coolclimate garden, they knew it would mean moving south of the Murray River, ideally to a medium-altitude region north-west of Melbourne, Victoria. It wasn’t long before they came across an advertisement for a property that seemed to tick all the boxes: the old Newlyn bank.
The weatherboard bank, which closed its doors in 1979, was on one hectare of farmland in a small country town just north of Ballarat, in the Victorian Central Highlands. The area is 550 metres above sea level and receives rainfall of 700 millimetres a year. Andrew and Nigel flew down to see the property, fell in love with it and with the area, and made an offer the same day.
Fifteen years later, the Arts and Crafts–style devotees are the proud custodians of a garden that, they cheerfully concede, has been heavily influenced by English gardens – including Rousham and Hidcote in the Cotswolds, and gardens designed by Harold Peto, such as Iford Manor in Wiltshire and Buscot Park in Oxfordshire. Andrew and Nigel also drew inspiration from gardens in the Daylesford and Mount Dandenong regions, including Stuart Rattle’s Musk Farm, Frogmore Gardens, Cloudehill and Paul Bangay’s country gardens.
“We love the formal Italianate features of Peto’s gardens, which combine structure with romantic softness,” Andrew says. “We have tried to achieve that balance at Bank House. There is a definite structure to our garden, but a softness in the woodland plantings of foxgloves, peonies, trilliums and bulbs. We also love midsummer perennials like dahlias, roses and phlox.”
With the help of local tradesmen and friends, the couple renovated the old bank building to make it into a cosy country home. Work on the garden has been incremental, with plants sourced from Frogmore Gardens, Dicksonia Rare Plants and Lambley Nursery. Many plants were provided by the Friends of Wombat Hill Botanic Gardens in Daylesford. The late Stuart Rattle provided design inspiration and encouragement, both in the garden and house. Mount Macedon’s John Graham is a great mentor.
The original idea for the garden was to plant a few trees in the back paddock, but the plan evolved and broadened over time. “We started off quite small, without a master plan, building the garden around the house,” Andrew explains. “As we got more confident, the garden got bigger, until it covered the whole block. Fortunately, we have fantastic brown soil and a good water supply. We planted hedges of privet, hornbeam and laurel to provide protection from the hot north winds, and we found that we could create microclimates with these windbreaks. We have frost, ice and occasionally snow in winter and 40-degree days in summer, so the weather is a mixed bag. You have to nurse the garden through the hot periods in January and February.” >
“There is a definite structure to our garden, but also a softness in the woodland plantings.”