Friday, October 31, 2008

Cloudehill

I visited the Cloudehill garden in the Dandenong Ranges about a month ago. The planting are quite lovely, the design is beautiful, I find the sculpture rather jarring. The website describes the garden thus:

Cloudehill is inspired by the famous arts and crafts gardens of England: Sissinghurst, Hidcote, Tintinhull and others. These, in turn, are derived from the renaissance gardens of Italy such as Villa D'este and Villa Lante. Our green theatre is a tribute to those magnificent Italian hill gardens. Of course, Cloudehill's location, with its reasonably gentle slopes, the dramatic forest to one side and exhilarating views to the mountains, provide plenty of inspiration and the placing of art works into the gardens give a contemporary twist to a classic design.
The garden has those Edwardian garden rooms that were inspired by Italian gardens. By the Baroque as much as by the Renaissance I might add, these two styles often get conflated, but that is just my own pedantry.

Images:
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Is this just a garden rule or a personal philosophy? Hmm.

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Beautiful yellow magnolias.

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The pond.

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Fritillaria Meleagris


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One of the vistas, the plantings weren't quite as full when I visited, but the gorgeous yellow poppies filled the void.

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More poppies en masse.


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A garden room and doorway a la Sissinghurst.

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Heliobores.

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Moving from the structured to the naturalistic, a field of daffodils,
one of the ephemeral delights of gardens.

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A Rhodedendron.

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The Garden Theatre, reminds me of the Villa Bianchi Bandinelli near Siena.



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The dog on the counter.

3 comments:

  1. Thanks for your material. I created a link to your bloke and explained clearly that I am totally unfamiliar with the idea of formal garden designs. My idea of a gorgeous garden is a] it smells nice, b] it has still or moving water and c] there are plenty of fruit trees.

    Anyhow, you wrote that "the garden has those Edwardian garden rooms that were inspired by Italian gardens". What were Edwardian garden rooms exactly?

    a newly found fan of yours
    Hels
    Art and Architecture, mainly
    http://melbourneblogger.blogspot.com/

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi Hels,

    Thanks for your comment. To answer your question about garden rooms there are essentially confined spaces within a garden. Typically with walls of greenery rather than masonry, though they do vary. The Edwardian period (1900-10) saw a revival of the formal garden, in opposition to the naturalistic garden that had held sway for the past 150 years. Anyway, you have got me thinking I should write an entry upon the garden room in its many guises across the history of gardens.

    cheers
    Katya

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  3. Pleased to see the Cloudehill doglet has recuperated from the bandaged version I saw there in June 07.

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