Kew Cemetery tour tracks the return of a garden 'wonderland'

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Kew Cemetery tour tracks the return of a garden 'wonderland'

By Megan Backhouse

The Boroondara (Kew) Cemetery is a 12.5-hectare triangle of one-time grassy woodland that was reserved for burial sites in 1855. It has gone through a number of landscaping guises in its 163-year history. It was laid out with serpentine paths and funerary-symbolic plants from the late 1850s and, over the ensuing decades, its plantings became looser and more relaxed. River red gums from the park next door started self-seeding around the place and native grasses and dianellas began to reappear amid the rosemary, bulbs and roses.

By the 1960s the cemetery had become what one visitor described as "a wonderland" of weathered gravestones and wild vegetation. But it was also pretty weedy and from about 1990 herbicides were regularly used. A decade later, many of the soft edges were gone.

Helen Page at Boroondara General Cemetery, Kew.

Helen Page at Boroondara General Cemetery, Kew.Credit: Wayne Taylor

Seven years ago, Helen Page, a past chairwoman of the Australian Garden History Society's Victorian branch, joined the Boroondara Cemetery Trust and established a program of working bees, new plantings and more targeted weed removal to return the place to a "garden cemetery" of old.

She will discuss progress during a "walk and talk" at the cemetery (corner Parkhill Road and High Street, Kew) on August 26 at 2pm. Page will also point out the graves of horticultural identities buried here.

The event is hosted by the Australian Garden History Society, $25/$20 members (including afternoon tea.) Bookings are essential, email helenpage@bigpond.com or phone 0418 546 979.

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