Looking out from Denise and Peter Hennessy’s kitchen into their garden at Adelong Park, Brewongle I admired the view of a classic country garden – a courtyard leading to the tennis court, surrounded by spacious lawns against a background of tall trees.
It wasn’t always like this.
Over coffee Denise and I shared memories of life with young children in a fibro cottage surrounded by bare paddocks, and the challenge of starting a garden while battling the early 1980s drought.
Denise grew up in Turramurra where her parents’ large garden had a semi-rural feel, with vegetables and chooks and even sheep. Peter, a Sydney lawyer, also had countryside connections: childhood holidays were spent in Brewongle, and Adelong Park is named after his father’s birthplace in the Riverina.
After their marriage they settled in a weatherboard cottage on Sydney’s North Shore but longed for a rural foothold, so after a few years started out in the bush with 300 acres.
The fibro cottage was enlarged into a home big enough to accommodate five daughters and Denise began planting trees to create shelter from the wind that howls across the treeless Bathurst plains.
She started with a mixture of evergreen cypresses and added deciduous claret ash (Fraxinus angustifolia ‘Raywood’) for its gorgeous autumn colour, Crab Apples and Cherries for spring blossom, a driveway of Silver Birch (Betula pendula) and tall Lombardy poplars as punctuation marks against the skyline.
A visit to England and its gardens inspired her to divide the garden into rooms separated by tall hedges and linked by archways.
This added interest to the flat site, and creates a sense of anticipation combined with surprised as you walk through the garden.
A large vegetable garden with raised beds and shade houses is Denise’s favourite area, and includes herbs and a clipped bay tree (Laurus nobilis).
I admired a hedge of blue flowering rosemary and contrasting orange marigolds, and healthy looking rows of kale and silver beet.
Denise loves flowers but understands the limitations of frosty winters and hot dry summers. She aims for a Mediterranean style with olive trees and hardy salvias, sedums and roses.
Peter also recognised the importance of trees in the landscape, to create wildlife habitats and provide shade and shelter for stock.
He planted eucalypts, sheoaks and wattles along creek beds and later, as he acquired more land, in native corridors. To date he has put in an estimated 40 to 50,000 trees, an impressive achievement.
Denise and Peter love nature and see their large garden as an extension of it.
It looks out to the landscape and is part of it, reflecting their love of the bush and their care for their land.
Heads-up: Denise and Peter Hennessy’s garden at Adelong Park will open (together with Fiona and Bill’s garden at nearby St. Anthony’s Creek) as part of Bathurst Spring Spectacular (www.bathurstgardenclub.org.au/) October 27 and 28, 9.30am to 5pm. Entry $20 for ten gardens or $5 per garden. Tickets at gardens or Bathurst Visitor Information Centre. Details Heather, phone 0427470135.
A visit to England and its gardens inspired her to divide the garden into rooms separated by tall hedges and linked by archways.