Interview Recording
Interview Transcript
Chris Betteridge interviewed on 20 March 2007 by Roslyn Burge
Synopsis
Chris was the original landscape and environmental specialist in the Heritage and Conservation Branch of the NSW Department of Planning from 1978 and over the next decade that position provided him with the opportunity to pursue a strong interest in the protection of historic gardens and cultural landscapes generally. It was a stimulating time … all levels of government have worked to educate the public to appreciate cultural and natural heritage. I mean if you look at what has happened in the last twenty or thirty years there has been a huge amount of information put out on all the media about heritage and the value of things … However, Chris finds the current development pressures on many of our significant historic cultural landscapes very demoralising and spends much of his working life assessing the heritage impacts of growth area subdivisions and infrastructure proposals on these important sites.
In the 1970s the National Survey of Historic Gardens (funded by the Commonwealth) was being undertaken. Chris recalled James Broadbent was engaged … to carry out the survey in New South Wales and I was the liaison officer to oversee the funding of that project … a group of us went down to Tasmania to look at some major historic gardens in Northern Tasmania. At a workshop in Launceston in 1979, the establishment of an Australian garden history society was discussed and Chris presented a paper on legislative protection for historic gardens at the First Garden History Conference in Melbourne in March 1980.
As a foundation member of the AGHS and a member of its Interim Committee, Chris felt very strongly that the Society should be a garden history society rather than a horticultural society—with a stronger academic emphasis on the history of gardens and garden design in Australia—assisting the development of the Society were the increasing influence of the National Trust, the establishment of the Australian Heritage Commission and the Register of the National Estate, the introduction of heritage councils in most states and a greater appreciation of Australian gardens and people wanting to know … how they developed.
In 1996 Chris presented a paper titled Historic Gardens of the Southern Highlands: An Introduction, to the Australia ICOMOS Cultural Landscapes Conference held at Ranelagh House, Robertson. In 1998 Chris provided the National Trust with a heritage impact assessment of the proposal by the then tenant to install a hedge maze and other plantings at Harpers Mansion, Berrima. While the works eventually carried out posed certain impacts on the landscape setting of the house, they have increased the visitor appeal of the property and the income which the Trust can put to the ongoing conservation of this significant building.
I grew up in a flat in Parramatta but it was a fairly generous flat … built for the owners of the property and so it had its own little garden and my parents were both keen gardeners. My mother had been the daughter of a minister, she had moved around various church properties including some very lovely properties so she had very strong memories of the gardens in those places and she often talked about those and we had our little patch at Parramatta to look after.
But in the early 1950s my parents bought a property at Blackheath in the Blue Mountains and they engaged Paul Sorensen, a Danish landscape designer to design the garden …so he put in a rockery of Blue Mountain’ ironstone and he planted a conifer hedge and a row of silver birches and he introduced a lot of Alpine plants—Alpine phlox and aubretia and things like that.
My earliest memories are going with my parents to Sorensen’s Nursery at Leura and walking around the nursery and I remember talking to Howard Tanner not so long ago and some of his earliest memories are also going with his parents to Sorensen’s. Howard tells a funny story about being there one day with his parents and someone came into look at plants and asked Paul Sorensen how much something cost and Paul turned to Howard’s parents and said, ‘If they have to ask they can’t afford it’. Sorensen wasn’t cheap either as a landscape designer or as nurseryman but he provided very high-quality material.
He enjoys collecting books on landscape and interesting plants: I always loved frangipanis and recently there have been a lot of new cultivars developed. While I still love the original creamy-yellow ones I have always wanted to grow the evergreen white frangipani, Plumeria obtusa. Even in Sydney’s relatively mild climate, this has proved quite a challenge so far but Chris still hopes for success.