By Robin Powell
The treeless plains of the Monaro, south of Cooma, look an unlikely location for fabulous gardens. Yet tucked between folds of close-cropped hills, down dirt roads and long looping driveways are historic properties with treasured gardens. Even better, you can visit some of them.
In 2014 three friends – Libby Litchfield of Hazeldean, Sally-Anne Coulter at Shirley and Sue Jardine at Curry Flat – formed Private Gardens of the Monaro, offering a limited number of self-drive garden tour days in autumn and spring for no more than 24 people per day.
John and Sally-Anne Coulter invited designer Paul Bangay to rethink the garden at Shirley, in 2008.Credit: Robin Powell
The day starts with morning tea at Hazeldean, a merino and angus stud of close to 5000 hectares. Libby's husband, Jim, is the fifth generation of Litchfields at Hazeldean so the recent decision to rip up the 150-year-old front garden was understandably tortuous. The plan was to enhance the impressive views, protect the established trees from drought, and make better use of precious green lawns.
The change has worked brilliantly and the house now looks over two expansive grass terraces bordered by elms and deodar that lead the eye to paddocks mounding gently all the way to the horizon. The plants from the former front garden are now thriving in new beds on either side of a pear-lined walk on the east side of the house. Beyond these is one of Libby's latest projects, an apple orchard underplanted with pink and white peonies, which she says grow like weeds in the tough Monaro climate. (I'll be back in spring to see that!)
At Hazeldean, the house looks over two expansive grass terraces bordered by elms and deodar.Credit: Robin Powell
The next stop on tour is Shirley, where John and Sally-Anne Coulter invited designer Paul Bangay to rethink the garden in 2008. The refashioned space exhibits Bangay's trademark control of scale and space.
The house now fronts a cool green lawn fringed with a sweep of perennials that in autumn is dominated by pink windflowers and lilac asters. There are more flowers on the north side of the old house where a flagstone terrace looks over a gravel-floored parterre of fragrant English lavender hedges and great bounding masses of pink roses gamboling around oversized urns.
Last stop of the day is lunch at Curry Flat, featuring lots of produce harvested from the extensive vegetable garden. The deep verandahs and bay windows of the 1895 house nestle into an arts and crafts-style garden laid out in the 1950s. David Austin roses fill wide beds in the hedged garden rooms and deciduous trees are mirrored in the lake.
All three gardens are very different but each contrasts the lavish beauty of the nurtured garden against the austere landscape. The whole day is a treat.
Find details for autumn and spring garden tour dates at privategardensofmonaro.com.au.