GARDEN AND OUTDOOR LIVING IDEAS
17/08/12 prepared by Natasha M
I was looking for some exciting material for this page online. I started with the world's botanical gardens, then switched to darling Australia and then I thought: sometimes we are looking outside when here, next door to us, there some absolutely marvelous places and private gardens of Victoria:
Cruden Farm
History
In 1928 journalist and newspaper executive Keith Murdoch gave his 19-year-old bride, Elisabeth Greene, a small farm as a wedding present. Elisabeth loved the property at first sight, but Murdoch, a perfectionist, soon engaged leading design professionals to revitalise the modest weatherboard cottage and old-fashioned garden as a weekend retreat suitable for his family and for entertaining. Harold Desbrowe – Annear extended the cottage, Percy Meldrum designed the stables, and Edna Walling laid out the garden.
Dame Elisabeth Murdoch
Dame Elisabeth’s upbringing taught her to love gardens and the land, because as a young wife and mother of four she found herself running two large gardens in city and country. Neither had a good water supply so she would wake at dawn – a habit that has never left her – to pump water and shift hoses. Or she would do this at dusk after a day’s work in the city.
Michael Morrison
Gardens are Michael Morrison’s passion. After horticulture studies and 10 years working with a local nursery, in 1971 he took on Sunday morning work for Dame Elisabeth, who had had little help in the large garden since making Cruden Farm her home after her husband’s death in 1952. His involvement is now all but fulltime. The partnership is significant; he and ‘the boss’ think alike. Their regular circumnavigations of the garden in Dame Elisabeth’s electric buggy are times of great pleasure that inspire important decisions – immediate and longer-term – about design and planting, and keep them in touch with new developments.
I was looking for some exciting material for this page online. I started with the world's botanical gardens, then switched to darling Australia and then I thought: sometimes we are looking outside when here, next door to us, there some absolutely marvelous places and private gardens of Victoria:
Cruden Farm
History
In 1928 journalist and newspaper executive Keith Murdoch gave his 19-year-old bride, Elisabeth Greene, a small farm as a wedding present. Elisabeth loved the property at first sight, but Murdoch, a perfectionist, soon engaged leading design professionals to revitalise the modest weatherboard cottage and old-fashioned garden as a weekend retreat suitable for his family and for entertaining. Harold Desbrowe – Annear extended the cottage, Percy Meldrum designed the stables, and Edna Walling laid out the garden.
Dame Elisabeth Murdoch
Dame Elisabeth’s upbringing taught her to love gardens and the land, because as a young wife and mother of four she found herself running two large gardens in city and country. Neither had a good water supply so she would wake at dawn – a habit that has never left her – to pump water and shift hoses. Or she would do this at dusk after a day’s work in the city.
Michael Morrison
Gardens are Michael Morrison’s passion. After horticulture studies and 10 years working with a local nursery, in 1971 he took on Sunday morning work for Dame Elisabeth, who had had little help in the large garden since making Cruden Farm her home after her husband’s death in 1952. His involvement is now all but fulltime. The partnership is significant; he and ‘the boss’ think alike. Their regular circumnavigations of the garden in Dame Elisabeth’s electric buggy are times of great pleasure that inspire important decisions – immediate and longer-term – about design and planting, and keep them in touch with new developments.
Spring
Early spring is a time of anticipation and unfolding promise. The last daffodils crowd the slopes around the lake; clumpy perennials peep through the soil in the Walled Garden. The Rock Garden displays its treasures – miniature daffodils, anemones, cyclamen, true snowdrops. Magnolias and azaleas dazzle; blossom is alive with bees. Roses spill over the post and rail fence in the ‘homeless plants bed’ near the lake, and mauve clusters of wisteria cascade from the gnarled branches of the same plant that Dame Elisabeth found so appealing when she first saw Cruden Farm in 1928.
Early spring is a time of anticipation and unfolding promise. The last daffodils crowd the slopes around the lake; clumpy perennials peep through the soil in the Walled Garden. The Rock Garden displays its treasures – miniature daffodils, anemones, cyclamen, true snowdrops. Magnolias and azaleas dazzle; blossom is alive with bees. Roses spill over the post and rail fence in the ‘homeless plants bed’ near the lake, and mauve clusters of wisteria cascade from the gnarled branches of the same plant that Dame Elisabeth found so appealing when she first saw Cruden Farm in 1928.
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Summer
Summer is the season of the Walled Garden – a place of immense amplitude with a dazzling element of surprise. In the late 1940s Dame Elisabeth altered Edna Walling’s original planting in the Walled Garden and installed two wide perennial borders. Stalwarts today are delphiniums, thalictrums, phlox, salvias, daisies, dahlias and Alchemilla mollis; Lilium henryii towers over the walls. It is a changing scene; blues, greens and whites move to pinks, mauves and yellows when the summer light is strongest, then cooler colours re-emerge. With good soil preparation and assiduous dead-heading the display lasts up to five months – an achievement in an enclosed space. |
Autumn
More than eighty years in the making and the heart of a working farm, the garden at Cruden Farm is a small piece of country set amid dense suburbia. It feels as if it will endure forever… 
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Winter
Winter is a time for work. With open days concluded, the plants in the Walled Garden are cut back and taken up, the Picking Garden and the Borders tidied. Roses and hydrangeas are pruned, and hedges shaped. Lawns get a good top-dressing.
The two gardeners evaluate. And as they drive around the garden, they contemplate. A garden without its embroidery of flowers and foliage is a garden exposed. Winter at Cruden Farm reveals the shape of the trees. You are more aware of the art works around the garden, especially the new sculpture by the water, and of the warm brown local stone in walls, stables and the massive chimneys. The house’s slender white plantation-style verandah columns stretch up unobscured, echoed by the white trunks of nearby melaleucas, and the silver-toned eucalypts along the drive.
Winter is a time for work. With open days concluded, the plants in the Walled Garden are cut back and taken up, the Picking Garden and the Borders tidied. Roses and hydrangeas are pruned, and hedges shaped. Lawns get a good top-dressing.
The two gardeners evaluate. And as they drive around the garden, they contemplate. A garden without its embroidery of flowers and foliage is a garden exposed. Winter at Cruden Farm reveals the shape of the trees. You are more aware of the art works around the garden, especially the new sculpture by the water, and of the warm brown local stone in walls, stables and the massive chimneys. The house’s slender white plantation-style verandah columns stretch up unobscured, echoed by the white trunks of nearby melaleucas, and the silver-toned eucalypts along the drive.
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Address:
Cruden Farm 60 Cranbourne Road Langwarrin Victoria Australia 3910 |
website: www.crudenfarm.com.au
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