Lost gardens of Sydney

…around it grew noble trees, both European and Colonial, the English oak in its early spring garb of yellow green being here and there overtopped by the grand and more sombre Norfolk Island pine.¹

When Louisa Meredith admired the soft maturity of the garden around First Government House, the site of a new Government House had already been chosen and construction begun. The fate of that first garden has echoes in many Sydney gardens- subdivision to offset the cost of a new house or in the name of progress. Like the garden surrounding First Government House, many of those featured in Lost Gardens are either lost or substantially destroyed. Some are on the brink of disappearing. The pressure is relentless. For each garden remembered here, there were many more. Their loss highlights the importance of those that remain.

Early views of the garden at First Government House, with its ordered rows of cultivation, signify a garden for the governor's table rather than one to impress with a show of flowers. A dump of giant bamboo and a young Norfolk Island pine that Governor Hunter nicknamed 'Phillip's Araucaria' after Arthur Phillip who planted it, were key elements. By 1800 when Governor Philip Gidley King arrived, an avenue of stone pines had sufficiently matured to become a discernible feature. King remodelled the garden at the front of the house, but the next governor, William Bligh, wrought more changes. Bligh named the land that Phillip had reserved 'the Domain of the Governor's Residence' and began blasting around the point, commencing the road that Mrs Macquarie would finish, and smoothing the landscape in the style of popular British landscape designer 'Capability' Brown. Between 1810 and 1822 Governor and Mrs Macquarie transformed the Domain. This visionary duo shaped Sydney and beyond at a critical stage in the colony's development. A beautifully rendered plan from 1816, showing Mrs Macquarie's road and other improvements in the Domain, featured the exhibition.​

​George Johnston's estate, Annandale, was in the country in 1800. Now it is an innercity suburb. Sydney's first avenue of Norfolk Island pines was planted here. It led to a large rectangular garden, which was divided into segments by straight paths edged with broad drains designed to catch run-off when it rained. Simple geometric layouts were a practical solution for the early colonists and, at Annandale, this form was maintained until the garden was subdivided and demolished around 1900. A beautiful and rarely seen charcoal drawing of Annandale's garden was a feature of the exhibition.

For each garden remembered here, there were many more. Their loss highlights the importance of those that remain.

Many colonial estates had a small vineyard, for either table or wine grapes, and Annandale was no exception. However, the terraced vineyard that Sir John Jamison began establishing at Regentville, near Penrith, in 1829- 1830 was like no other. A Conrad Martens watercolour of Regentville in the 1830s, from a private collection, clearly shows the terraces being worked. This painting was featured in the exhibition alongside a Martens pencil sketch of the same view, which is part of the Caroline Simpson Collection. As far as can be established, these fascinating artworks have never been shown together before.

As the pale castellated towers of the new Government House rose in the Domain, Sydney's socially aspiring residents began to vie with each other to establish impressive mansions with elaborately ornamented gardens. By the mid 19th century the terraced Italianate garden, a style well suited to the sloping sites around Sydney Harbour, was at the forefront of fashionable garden design in Britain. The appeal of London's Crystal Place - constructed in Hyde Park for the Great Exhibition of 1851 and successfully re-erected in Italianate grounds at Sydenham Hill in South London - had cemented the place of this style.​

At Clarens, Potts Point, politician James Martin developed one of the most architecturally elaborate gardens constructed in Australia. The Italianate eastern terrace at Government House, designed about 1861 under Governor Sir John Young, was restrained in comparison to Clarens. With its profusion of classical statuary (including one of the three Graces wearing a mask of Comus, the Greek god of revelry, in her hand), this 'garden falling down to the sea'² was like 'fairyland' for visiting English novelist Anthony Trollope.

While the statuary and ornamentation of the garden at Clarens took its inspiration from ancient Greece, the plantings fulfilled the ambitions of all Victorian-era gardeners- exotic and rare plants from all corners of the globe formed a profusion of foliage and flowers. The cinnamon tree was a favourite, as was a jacaranda from Michael Guilfoyle's Exotic Nursery in Double Bay, which became the ‘dream tree' for the Martin children. Flights of stone steps with ornamental stone balustrades and Grecian vases led, terrace by terrace, past classical statues, a fine stone summerhouse (later known as the 'temple of the winds') and a pair of sphinxes, and then down to a bathing house beside the harbour.

The Commonwealth Government acquired Clarens for naval use during World War II and much of the lower garden was almost completely destroyed when stairs, statuary, paths and urns were smashed during construction of an underground substation. The centrepiece of Martin's Grecian odyssey- a replica of the Choragic Monument of Lysicrates - was saved and re-erected in the Royal Botanic Gardens, near Farm Cove. Today, the site of Clarens is incorporated into HMAS Kuttabul, the Australian Navy's onshore training and accommodation facility. In the 1970s Jack Gibbs, head gardener at Kuttabul, began excavating and reconstructing remnants of the Clarens garden. One of the sphinxes and fragments of the balustrades and urns was featured in the exhibition, invoking the spirit of Clarens' 'fairyland'.

The Australian Garden History Society took pride in assisting the Historic Houses Trust in producing both the exhibition and accompanying book. Essayist Francis Bacon reasoned that people 'come to build stately, sooner than to garden finely, - as if gardening were the greater perfection',³ a sentiment repeated by early Sydney nurseryman Thomas Shepherd. Sydney's lost gardens are part of a rich history that is often overlooked, and their stories are an entreaty for Sydney to cherish its heritage and to ensure the creation of new gardens that can provide pleasure and inspiration for generations to come.