Tune in to my conversation with Jonathan Green on Blueprint for Living. Jonathan came to visit our garden on a cold day in winter… and we chatted about Gordon Ford, naturalistic design, creating habitat with understory and other topics.
Tune in to my conversation with Jonathan Green on Blueprint for Living. Jonathan came to visit our garden on a cold day in winter… and we chatted about Gordon Ford, naturalistic design, creating habitat with understory and other topics.
When our garden opened in spring, 2016, it had endured some of the toughest drought years this area has known. It was a period of transition and renewal where many of the original plantings were no longer coping with the changed conditions. Some areas had been replanted but they were yet to reestablish. Since then, better-than-average rainfall and a run of mild summers have benefitted the garden immensely. We are so pleased to be opening again, seven years later as the garden has matured and come into its own.
The southern point of the Mornington Peninsula outside Melbourne, Australia, is a landscape of two halves. The inner shore, on Port Phillip Bay, is calm and sheltered, a place of holidaymakers and sun-seekers. The outer coast is a different beast entirely.
With a career spanning six decades, Gordon Ford was a grand master of the Australian natural garden. Briony Downes looks at the key elements of his practice and how a new exhibition sheds light on his enduring legacy.