Victoria

Event Calendar

• Victoria Branch: Albert Park walk & talk

  27 February @ 4:00 pm - 6:00 pm AEDT

  Gracious Gardens and Re-Imagined Green Spaces in Albert Park St Vincent Gardens and Gasworks Art Par...

• Victoria Branch – Beaumaris Modern Walking Tour

  15 May @ 10:00 am - 12:00 pm AEST

  About Led by Beaumaris Modern group founder, Fiona Austin, this walking tour takes in the Eastern pa...

• 2025 Annual National Conference

  31 October - 2 November at The Barn

  Mount Gambier Conference 2025 Beyond the Garden Fence The 2025 AGHS conference will be held at The B...

Working Bees

Working bees are one way we support custodians of private historic gardens and demonstrate that we value their contribution and the assets they maintain.

Dates for 2025 are:

• Sunday 30 March       Longacres, Olinda
• Sunday 18 May            Turkeith, Birregurra
• Sunday 15 June            Belmont, Raglan

Please reply to Fran Faul by the Thursday before the date so the owners know catering numbers.  Also please indicate if you require transport or, if you have your own transport and are willing to drive others and require directions to the properties.

Email Fran Faul (franfaul@gmail.com) for all enquires and details.

Oral History Update

The Branch conducts oral histories from time to time. These are added to the AGHS National Oral History Collection and lodged with the State Library of Victoria as historical records. We thank the people who gave up their time and recollections to provide a wealth of knowledge for garden historians and interested parties.

If you know of any prominent Victorians in the garden history world, including non-members, whom you think should have their history recorded, please contact the branch.

Historic Gardens in Victoria

Victoria contains many significant historic gardens and cultural landscape and recording them is an important part of our commitment.

The following garden histories are available under “Shop” on the website for free download or purchase:

• Goronga
• Umina
• Longacres
• Titanga
• Belmont
• Bishopscourt
• Buda
• Burnley Gardens
• Claremont
• Murndal
• Turkeith and Mooleric
• Wombat Park

Advocacy Update – AGHS Vic Branch February 2025

Draft Master Plan – Royal Park
The branch has responded to Participate Melbourne’s request for feedback, via a survey on the Draft Master Plan for Royal Park. Members may also respond at participate.melbourne.vic.gov.au/royal-park-master-plan-review and follow the various submissions. The branch had been involved in previous Master Plans and will keep across all stages of the new plan.

Wombat Park, Daylesford
Wombat Park was nominated by our branch to the Victorian Heritage Register several years ago.  Despite long delays, we are advised the assessment will proceed in the current financial year.

 The Gong & Buninyong Botanic Gardens Masterplan, Buninyong
Since formally adopting their Masterplan in June 2023, Ballarat City Council has not yet provided a schedule for commencement of their proposed works at The Gong and Buninyong Botanic Gardens.  Friends of the Buninyong Botanic Gardens and the community Stakeholders Advisory Group has proposed an alternative scheme proposing creation of environmentally managed wetlands that:

• leave existing dam wall and vegetation intact, thus avoiding breaching of the Gardens’ Heritage Victoria listed values.
• manage the water volume and flow into The Gong via a series of small wetland ponds above The Gong, to its east.
• allows for retention of fishing activities in The Gong, provision of habitat for bio-diversity, increased vegetation cover for shade and cooling, and management of invasive species; and
• facilitates implementation of a strategic corridor through to outlying remnant bushland.

This alternative proposal will be submitted to Heritage Victoria when the City of Ballarat formally submits its plans for approval to proceed with their works which “… will have detrimental impacts on the cultural heritage significance of the Buninyong Botanic Gardens” ref: Context – GML Heritage Consultants, Heritage Impact Statement, August 2020.

As at February 2025, it is understood that a new Councillor has asked for a review of the dam wall proposal so we are awaiting this outcome.

Working with National Trust (Vic)
AGHS is now represented, through the Advocacy team, on National Trust (Vic) Landscape Reference Group which meets annually.

OpenAustralia Foundation
Advocacy team note the difficulty of keeping abreast of planning proposals that may affect significant gardens and cultural landscapes in each local government area (LGA), requiring constant vigilance. PlanningAlerts is a free service run by the independent charity OpenAustralia Foundation.

We are grateful to all AGHS members not on the current committee who are active as stakeholders, in community and resident groups, in their individual LGAs and as previous submitters of applications to Heritage Victoria and other planning bodies.

Queens Avenue row of trees in Glen Eira City Council area, is case in point. Members in this LGA have assisted by making views on environmental, heritage and canopy etc. values for tree retention, compatible with cycleways and the Level Crossing Removal Authority plans. Social media fora and lobbying of GEC Councillors by individuals has been an opportunity to raise AGHS’s profile as an organisation committed to those values.

Projects

Yantaringa Gardens Project

This involved the branch giving assistance and advice to this garden in Ivanhoe. Barrie Gallacher, Landscape Architect specialising in Landscape Heritage Projects, prepared a comprehensive restoration guide in 2024. It is fully detailed report with garden layout schematics, existing plant conditions, recommendations for replacement plantings, and suggestions for some hard landscaping alterations. A hard copy is available on request from the branch.  A Pictorial/photographic essay of this site will be published on the AGHS website in early 2025.

Digitisation and databasing of 1916 Nobelius Nursery transaction ledger
AGHS Vic contributed directly to the digitisation (image capture) of these unique ledgers in the form of a new scanner for the Museum to use in support of their program of making their historic nursery documentation accessible online.

Obtaining support for the transcription of the digitised ledger by recruitment of students to work on the captured images proved unproductive. New technologies that can ‘read’ handwriting are being assessed to progress this venture. Should this be successful, the project will be able to move to the next stage – enabling databasing of the records

Relationship development with Trust for Nature, TFN (Memorandum of Understanding signed June 2023)
A foundation event for this relationship at the Heathmont property ‘Uambi’ was held in July 2024. An AGHS representative spoke about the cultural history of the landscape followed by a TFN representative leading the group through the bushland reserve, highlighting ecological challenges, specimens and plant group relationships.

A similar event format is being planned for mid 2025 with TFN, at Harbury in Pakenham Upper. This property has a close relationship to nearby Goronga, for which AGHS has published both a written history and pictorial essay.

The research effort for these two properties will result in cultural landscape histories to be published in 2025. The plan is for both AGHS and TFN to mount these publications on their respective websites, in accordance with the mutual benefit provisions of the MOU.