A heritage garden for a heritage house.

Coochin Coochin Homestead 1920

Coochin Coochin Homestead 2005

I often look at suburban housing around Brisbane  as I love domestic spaces and way homes and gardens are used. The over all picture could generally be enhanced by gardens , footpath planting and maintenance of public spaces. What seems to be missing in our overly landscaped environment are the soft edges which is where gardens come in to play.
A garden that echo's the period of a house will give the house a context and it doesn't matter if the house is a 1875 mansion , workers cottage or a dwelling built in the 50's , 60's or 70's .
An inappropriate garden that does not work with the building is missing a great opportunity to make a valuable statement and preserve garden history.  I think every house has an ideal garden style that will suit it as well as the needs of a contemporary owner.A great deal of effort,time and consideration goes into home restoration however once the re-stumping, roofing,timber work, wiring ,plumbing, verandahs ,interiors, and painting are done the garden can often be an after thought especially if significant trees have been removed or there has been great disruption to the site.
 It would probably be best for the renovation of the house and garden to be planned even before the work begins. This is the time when an inventory of plants can be made and remnant trees, shrubs identified. Remnant landscaping such as paths, outdoor garden edgings can also give clues to inform your garden design.It is worth getting an opinion form a plants person who can identify plants that are worth keeping as even the most forlorn specimen might just need water, pruning or fertilising to bring it back to health and vigour.Some plants are just weeds and can grow to be extraordinary pests and will need to be removed. A  worthy garden plant that has survived drought and neglect is just the plant you want to keep .When I see the swift , careless destruction of a garden, the removal of a tree it always makes me think of the loss of decades of growth ,  maturity and the natural ecosystem that supported numerous plants and insects . Nine times out of ten a landscaper will come in and plant a lilly pilly or two and the gormless won't even notice it anyway. ( But it's native so it must be good)
The message is not to be too hasty with the destruction of any garden.
In our book 'A Garden Forever ', we give examples of how to keep records through photographs, drawings, stories and plant lists. We acknowledge the gardeners who gardened before us and the land before settlement. It is very interesting to research our ancestry and to discover the former owners of the houses we live in and learning about gardens is just an extension of this.
Keeping records today is the history of the future.
A garden is an artificial space and to create a garden that accents the period of the home is a way of learning more fully about the way people lived in the past. Most domestic Queensland gardens had fruit trees like mango ,banana and mulberries and many had shade trees like Jacarandas. Many people kept chooks and had productive vegetable gardens , ornamental gardens ,a rotary clothes hoist an incinerator and an outhouse.The domestic garden today is not that different . We might need car ports , entertainment areas and swimming pools but I refuse to believe that it needs to lose the softness and the atmosphere that gardens should have.