Awesome Aussie Plants (and where to see them) Pt 2
Chelsea Australian Garden at Olinda
The Chelsea Flower Show is a big deal. Held in London each spring, garden enthusiasts congregate over a few days to see the latest in garden designs and ornamental arrangements from plant growers and landscape designers from around the UK and abroad. The reigning monarch usually turns up, and medals are awarded for the best creations. It can be very competitive.
After many years of exhibiting at the Chelsea Flower Show, Wes Fleming, a third-generation Australian nurseryman decided that the 2013 show would be his last, and he wanted to go out with a bang. Travelling all the way from Melbourne to do this each year had been a huge effort, so he enlisted the help of his neighbour, landscape designer Phillip Johnson. Together they came up with a plan for an amazing garden that would show the Brits what could be created with Aussie imagination, ingenuity and an incredible array of unique plants.
That year Wes and Phillip’s Australian Garden won the ‘Best in Show’ award, the first time in the show’s one-hundred-year history that the judges’ decision had been unanimous and that a non-British exhibit had taken out the prestigious award.
Back home on the outskirts of Melbourne, discussions started on how they might be able to replicate their award-winning garden closer to home. A permanent garden on a bigger scale, not just something built for an event but a garden to be enjoyed for generations.
The result is the Chelsea Australian Garden at Olinda. Opening in 2023, the completed garden is twenty times bigger than that originally built for the Flower Show ten years earlier. There are trees, shrubs, ferns and flowers all growing around a billabong filled with aquatic plants. All this is against a backdrop constructed of hundreds of tonnes of rock, skilfully put together to appear as if it’s been there for millions of years.
The centrepiece of the garden is a large sculpture, an artist’s impression of a waratah flower, which in the original Flower Show garden was built to exacting specifications so Queen Elizabeth II could use it as a lookout to view the garden.
The whole garden has been built using sustainable design principles, including the use of recycled and reclaimed materials; the billabong is fed by stormwater runoff and the waterfall powered by solar panels.
Overall, there are some 15,000 plants from more than 400 native Australian species arranged in a natural setting, creating a biodiverse habitat for the birds, frogs and insects that inhabit the area. It’s an outstanding garden taking full advantage of its location – a rare north-facing hillside in the Dandenong Ranges – enabling many plants to thrive that wouldn’t usually do so at this latitude or elevation.
The Chelsea Australian Garden at Olinda is part of the Dandenong Ranges Botanic Garden (formerly the National Rhododendron Gardens) located about one kilometre from the township of Olinda, around an hour’s drive east of Melbourne. It’s about a 600 metre walk from the carpark down a hill (which you’ll have to walk back up) so keep this in mind if you have mobility limitations. Note that parking in peak times can be challenging at this site too, so consider visiting on a weekday or outside school holidays if possible.
More information can be found at the Parks Victoria website.
