Garden Visit: Government House

Last week, I had an Elvish Rest Day. Tolkien's elves, you may remember, did not sleep, but rested their minds by thinking of beautiful things. That is what I set out to do.

Government House, in Sydney, is the official residence* of the Governor of NSW. The grounds are open to the public, or so they tell you, but in fact you can only view about half the gardens unless you wish to risk official wrath. I visited with my iPhone last week, so the photo quality is somewhat lower than usual.

Like the gates?


Construction of Government House began in 1836. Due to economic problems, the building was not completed until 1845, though it was in use beforehand. There have been many additions and alterations since; the porte-cochere dates from 1872.


I love the curve in this gate:


Part of a covered way from the House to The Chalet.The Chalet is Federation-era and I suspect the covered walk is too.


On the far side of the covered way was this beautiful border. Very much Sydney in late spring: irises, osteospermums, shasta daisies, sages, anemones and wisteria. The Harbour Bridge is visible in the background.


I also had a good view of the gubernatorial Hills' hoists*.


This glorious verandah on the eastern side is also a late addition, from 1879. The residents at the time found the sun too bright and hot in the eastern rooms. The verandah opens on to a formal terrace with flagged walks and a central fountain.


The terrace, alas, is closed to the public. I would love to have been able to see the plantings.


And what can you see from the terrace? Practically to South Head; the ship is moored at Garden Island Naval Base. Note the change in paving; I'd say this crazy-paving dates from the 1920s. Two Norfolk Island pines flank the path. These majestic trees were used to mark great estates all across Sydney.


This low wall surrounds the terrace. The pots contain venerable Agave victoria-reginae specimens (at least I think that's what they are) -- appropriate for a residence built in Victoria's reign. More Norfolk island pines define another axial view.


Details from a sunny tapestry bed of alyssum, lobelia, red ranunculus, primulas, and perennials not yet in flower. The gardener is a genius!


At one corner of Government House is this scene, common to older Sydney gardens: a Moreton Bay fig (these were preferred to the local Port Jackson Fig, which doesn't have such vast buttress-roots nor such large, deep green leaves), with underplanting of Bird's-nest ferns (Asplenium species) and cliveas. There's an elkhorn up in the fig, too. Cliveas are still the plant of choice here for dry shade.


The western facade: all Gothic Revival. No castles in the colonies! Were they pining for them?


Gothic Revival style was used on Government House because of the building below. These stables for the future Government House were designed by Francis Greenway for Governor Macquarie in 1816, but the Home Office put the brakes on Macquarie's ambitious public works programme before he could commission the main building.


The stables became surplus to the Governor's requirements in 1916 and it has housed the Sydney Conservatorium of Music ever since. The shrubbery above, in the Royal Botanical Gardens, is actually a green roof over some classrooms. It has a beautiful view too.


Front of 'the Con'. The tall cabbage-tree palms (Livistona australis) are endemic to the area. They are often found standing naked around older buildings like this, but naturally grow in mixed wet coastal forests. I am not sure what the shorter palms are -- they seem too slender to be Phoenix palms (Phoenix canariensis) which were widely planted here a century or so ago.


It was lovely to spend a day by myself looking at beautiful things!

* Government House has not been used as a residence for 15 years, though it is used as the venue for Vice-Regal functions; this meant it could be used for many more community events as well. The State Government announced a few days after my visit that Government House would become the official residence once more, in part because it is expected that the next Governor will be a person from country NSW. I hope that means that we will see the Vice-Regal undies flapping on the Hill's hoists again.

Eryldene

If you visit a garden on a gloomy morning after a rainy week, you can get lucky. We were when we visited Eryldene yesterday. The rain held off, mostly, and numbers were down, so we were part of a small tour of the ikebana exhibition in the elegant house and had the garden mostly to ourselves -- great when a pair of boys need to let off steam after being indoors the whole week!


It's one of Sydney's most famous gardens, and the house is the only unaltered example of William Hardy Wilson's domestic architecture. Hardy Wilson felt that the Georgian style of house (from our early Colonial period) was better suited to Sydney's climate than the Arts-and-Crafts style of his day, and with a house like this one can see his point. Eryldene has the lightness and symmetry of Georgian architecture, modernised for 1913 (which, of course, no longer seems modern to us!). The house still has the furniture the Waterhouses used, mainly 18th and 19th Century pieces with an airiness and delicacy that match the house. The proportions are delightful, and the house is complemented by the current ikebana exhibition. (While Professor Waterhouse's gardening fame rests on his detailed work on Camellias, his wife Janet was devoted to ikebana, so it was lovely to see so much of it in her house -- I am sure she would have loved it. )

View from a sleepout to the front garden. This sleepout is now part of a cafe run by the volunteers of the Eryldene Trust. I can recommend the (plunger) coffee and mixed cakes.


View to the side garden from the same sleepout. The Sprig declared this to be "just like a picture," and how right he is.


This temple, designed by Hardy Wilson, is on a side axis in the front garden -- plenty of formal symmetry in this garden...


... but informality too. This path is behind the temple and runs very close to the street boundary -- but you'd never guess while you're walking on it!


The camellia walk runs up the eastern side of the house, and the collection her will interest even non-camellia enthusiasts. (Isn't it funny how sometimes a genus can take hold of a person?) Note the little path off to the side: there are little side-paths throughout the garden, subverting the formal structure. My children are keen to see me replicate this idea at home. A pity we lack Eryldene's acre of ground!


Hardy Wilson designed several different structures in the garden over a long association with the Waterhouses. I love this walled fountain (1921), particularly the low bubbling jet in front. Note the Asian influence: both Hardy Wilson and EG Waterhouse were Sinophiles.


The tea-house, on the edge of the tennis court, was built in 1927. We'd call it fusion, these days.




Somehow, I've never felt entirely comfortable about this moon-gate. I know it's part of a tennis-court fence, but the metal tubing construction always seems wrong to me, no matter how practical it is.


I do love one other feature of Eryldene: camellia flowers floated in bowls of water throughout the garden. I don't know if it is typical of large gardens of the period, but it's pretty.

So is this formal path.


(And yes, that little structure in the background is what you think it is. When the house was built, the area was unsewered.)

Garden tool enthusiasts will be sorry to hear that The Old Mole is closing, as the people involved are retiring to other projects, particularly travel. However, Richard Bird was at Eryldene with his beautiful tools at sale prices, and I picked up a few of them. I'll show them off another time.

Return of the Hill's Hoist

That black stake towards the right is important. It is an X that marks the spot.


A day after I hammered it in, our builders replaced it with my old Hill's Hoist. I hadn't realised how big my clothesline was until I measured it -- each arm is eight feet long ( I would have guessed six feet), giving it a diameter of 5m. You need to allow at least a metre from any obstructions such as fences, so that your sheets can fly out in high winds without snagging.


Suddenly, my back yard feels more homelike, more like my little bit of postwar Australian suburbia. But not entirely. Here's a shot (taken by one of my children) of the Hill's Hoist in its original, convenient location: in line with the back door and close to the house to save steps.


The people who would have lived in my house first would not have ever had a back garden. They had a back yard, used for drying clothes, growing vegetables and fruit, and keeping chooks. These were not things you invited visitors to see, hence the prime location of the clothes-hoist.

These days, we cherish our outdoor time as our jobs are sedentary, and want to show off our back yards. Yet I still wanted the Hill's Hoist, so where could I put it?

My vegetable patch seemed to be a little too hot in summer: I had problems with plants suffering sunburn and dehydration. I'm moving my Hill's Hoist there, into a spot where it won't block views from our new doors. The vegetable garden will be closer to the house and water tanks, but you'll have to stay tuned for more about that.