A garden is thought to have been cultivated at ‘Wallasey-Beaumaris’ from the early 1860s when American brothers James and Patrick Ring took up land near Beechworth and sought their fortune on the Ovens goldfield. Perhaps the wonderful old cider pear at the heart of the garden was planted at this time.

Nearby, flowering trees and shrubs from East Asia, many of them brought into western cultivation by English-born American plant-hunter Ernest Henry Wilson, were planted in the ensuing century, where they thrive in a mix of earth that Beechworth vignerons call greywacke, mudstone, sandstone and shale. These include Photinia beauverdiana var. notablis, Rosa longicuspis var. sinowilsonii, Clematis armandii, Camellia transnokoensis, Hydrangea aspera villosa and Cyrilla racemiflora. Within the gentle formality of borders edged with English box and granite the garden is let to have its head. This wild air defines it.

The garden was open for Victoria’s Garden Scheme in 1988-89 and, more recently, to raise funds for the historic organ in Beechworth’s Anglican Christ Church in 2017, and for Open Gardens Victoria in 2018.

You are welcome to explore it and invited to email a choice of dates in advance. You can also discover more of the garden through Cuttings, our blog that shows the garden across the seasons.