REVIEW
One of the “beautiful lies” about Australian
history was that the first gardens were direct copies of
the gardens in Britain at the time. In fact, this was not
true. The early gardens reflected the layout of
pioneering gardens common in any new settlement.
They were essentially useful plants laid out in rectan-
gular beds. But from the beginning there were also
differences, particularly in the combination of plants.
Although Joseph Banks had sent out British staples
on the First Fleet, plants had also been collected from
Rio de Janeiro and Cape Town in the hope that such
exotic plants would grow in the new hot climate. The
settlers brought with them willow slips and stone
pines from Saint Helena; coffee, cocoa, cotton,
bananas, figs, bamboo and sugarcane from Rio de
Janeiro; apples, quinces, pears, oranges, lemons and
oaks from Cape Town; and later grapevines from
France. This exotic combination was sometimes
planted among remnant eucalypts, creating gardens
that were truly different and not simply re-creating
England. It could also be that Australian history reads
like beautiful lies because to the early settlers there
appeared to be no tradition already in place. They were
unable to see or understand the subtle complexity of
the existing Aboriginal culture and its relationship
to the land.
The horrors of starvation and despair in the first
two years of settlement tend to mask the stories of
how some gardens were successfully established quite
early. By 1793, for instance, a Spanish group visiting
Parramatta described how the new Government
House was surrounded by a beautiful garden in which
flourished fruit trees such as pomegranate and apple,
and beds of familiar vegetables.^2 But even more inter-
esting is an officer’s description, also in 1793, of a
settlers’ farm in Parramatta, which could be the
description of an Italian migrant’s garden today in
Carlton, Melbourne or Leichhardt, Sydney. He
described how the settlers had a well-laid-out garden,
in which husband and wife were busily at work. The
husband praised his wife for her hard work in the
garden and commented that if a man wanted to eat
grapes from his own vines and sit under the shade of
his fig trees, he had to work much harder in the new
settlement than in the home country.^3 Images of
early gardeners in their gardens in the exhibition
evoke just such a scene.
Creating gardens in a new country follows a
particular sequence. First there is the need to ensure
food, water and shelter, coupled with a sense of
excitement about the new place – a pioneering spirit.
Then, after essential needs have been met, a nostalgia
for home sets in. Perhaps the most disconcerting- The dramatic shape of Araucaria
bidwillii (bunya pine), with its dark-
coloured foliage, was greatly valued
as an Australian version of the dark
cedars of Lebanon found in the
English landscape garden during the
late nineteenth century.
Photo: Helen Armstrong
aspect of gardening for the early settlers was the
apparent lack of seasons. The evergreen, dull-co-
loured eucalypts were disappointing substitutes for
deciduous trees, which clearly indicated spring,
summer, autumn and winter. Trying to grow trees
that need water and misty rain, however, was often
beyond the resources of the early gardeners.
The Planting Dreams exhibition reveals that the
settling-in period for the young colony resulted in a
number of early garden styles. The first geometric
survival gardens were soon replaced with larger orna-
mental gardens; however, they were still laid out in a
neat geometric manner. It was not until Governor
Macquarie’s wife arrived in 1810 that the British land-
scape garden style was translated to the beautiful
setting of Sydney Harbour. The exhibition’s 1879
panorama of the Garden Palace shows remnants of
her early garden and how the north-facing slopes
of Sydney Harbour were dotted with pleasant villas
set within lawns sweeping to the water’s edge. The
same 1879 panorama also shows the exotic new tree,
the Araucaria heterophylla (Norfolk Island pine) –
endemic to Norfolk Island and first seen by Captain
Cook in 1774 – planted among groves of remnant
eucalypts, while walks wound around “Gothic follies,”
often in the form of natural sandstone outcrops,
providing classic picturesque focal points.
At the same time, other settlers had moved west
onto the Cumberland Plain and developed what could
be called the Australian Arcadian garden. Colonial
houses were built on the tops of hills, with long views
over the undulating plains toward the strong back-
drop of the Blue Mountains. Curving carriage drives,
planted with northern rainforest trees such as the
Araucaria bidwillii (bunya pine), formed grand
approaches to the houses. The dramatic shape of
these trees, with their dark-coloured foliage, was
greatly valued as an Australian version of the dark
cedars of Lebanon found in the English landscape
garden at that time.
The exhibition also includes some alluring
nineteenth-century scenes of Van Diemen’s Land,
where a few British migrants went as free settlers.
Some emigrated from the apple-orchard part of
Hertfordshire, bringing their arboriculture skills to
establish similar picturesque orchards. Scenes of
three Tasmanian gardens at the time – Woolmers
Estate, Panshanger Estate and Brickendon – repre-
sent an Australian Arcadia where artists such as
Joseph Lycett and William Lyttleton carefully manip-
ulated their paintings so that the landscape appeared
like the rural idyll of Britain: more “beautiful lies.”
The decade from the 1860s to the 1870s was →“Mark Twain would
have loved this
exhibition because it
is ‘full of surprises,
and adventures, and
incongruities, and
contradictions, and
incredibilities ...’”
LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE AUSTRALIA MAY 2017 75