LONGEVITY: This old pear is thought to be one of the original trees in Wallasey-Beaumaris garden – shown here in spring 2014. These trees grow to a great age. Image: Jamie Kronborg

The garden at Wallasey-Beaumaris extends across one hectare at the foot of a hill that rises 560 metres above sea level. The hill, behind the house, has a southerly aspect and features spectacular but senescent examples of narrow-leaf peppermint Eucalyptus radiata and grey box E. microcarpa. There are stands of naturally-occurring Blakely’s red gum E. blakelyi and a range of planted oaks, including red oak Quercus rubra, sawtooth oak Q. acutissima and pinoak Q. palustris, tulip tree Liriodendron tulipifera and Spanish chestnut Castagna. A copse of locust tree or false acacia Robinia pseudoacacia, pink horse chestnut Aesculus x carne and common hazel Corylus avellana also grow in the paddock. Temperatures range from -5º centigrade in winter to 40º at summer’s peak.

In the lane, towards the garden gate, there’s a pair of Himalayan or sawtooth oak Quercus acutissima, sycamore maple Acer pseudoplatanus, a purple-flowering crab apple Malus x purpurea ‘Eleyii’ – spectacular when in flower in spring – and Chinese apple-flowered crab M. spectabilis, known by its Chinese name as hai tang hua for its spring beauty. Alternating Liquidamabar styraciflua and Chinese or lacebark elm Ulmus parvifolia also grow here.

The garden was variously cultivated and then neglected for long stretches before it was refurbished and extended from the late 1970s. It had long been known as ‘Beaumaris’ – a Norman French name for the ‘marsh’ vista that remains below the garden drive. It was featured in the second year of Victoria’s Gardens Scheme in 1988–89 and was previewed in that season’s guidebook by John Patrick. Helen Gordon and Neil Smooker, Beechworth school teachers, began to renew the derelict garden from 1977 despite what Helen described at the time as persistent “bullrushes, blackberries, dock and other tenacious weeds, especially those that thrived on poorly-drained clay soil”. She set about planting native species but later replanted with exotics “when I finally realised that the house and garden should show some historical (and) aesthetic affinity”. She found that an addition had been made to the cottage front in 1890, with a bullnose verandah and timber fretwork that established its style – a design that has been maintained. She realigned the picket-paling front gate with the front door, straightened the entry path and used cuttings of English box Buxus sempervirens to delineate the garden’s principal axes and boundaries of the terrace on which the house stands.

AUTUMN HERALD: Berberis thunbergii ‘Fireglow’ between a hedge of English box and rose ‘Alister Stella Grey’ or ‘Golden Rambler’, a tea noisette from 1894. Image: Jamie Kronborg

Berberis thunbergii ‘Fireglow’ and B. thunbergii var. atropurpurea – forms of Japanese barberry – were also planted and have become spectacular harbingers of winter, adding to what are thought to be the garden’s original assets: an old French pear that produces small, bitter fruit in spring, a towering specimen of Photinia beauverdiana var. notabilis – brought into cultivation from China by famed late nineteenth century plant hunter Ernest Wilson – a venerable loquat Eriobotrya japonica and mulberry Morus nigra. These, and later planting of a pair of Cyrilla racemiflora – the swamp titi or he-huckleberry, the sole species of a genus endemic in Louisiana and the Carolinas – are among the garden’s unusual trees and shrubs.

The planting also includes numerous camellia species and varieties, which do so well in the Indigo hills, an alley of Manchurian pear Pyrus ussuriensis, weeping cherry, acer, junebush or shadbush Amelanchier lamarckii, berberis, birch, arbutus, clematis, mahonia, magnolia, roses and a grand example of cherry laurel Prunus laurocerasus – which often grows in country turned for gold.

Almost four decades since Helen Gordon’s reforming work, and the stewardship of Yvonne and Peter Wilkinson between 2005 and 2013, a pair of Camellia sasanqua ‘Pure Silk’ has reached six metres to brush its flushed white flowers against the bull-nosed verandah of the house – proof of a match between the Indigo hills’ cool climate and the mudstone soils in which camellia prospers. A hedge of C. sasanqua ‘Mine-no-yuki’ (‘Snow on the mountain’) extends for six metres and is clipped to a height of two metres, its deep, polished leaves a particular foil for the ragged, irregular-form flowers. Nearby is Chinese beautyberry Callicarpa dichotoma and Viburnum carlesii which, in mid-summer, are surrounded by a profusion of Matilija tree poppy Romneya coulteri.

Since 2013 owners Peter Kenyon and Jamie Kronborg have worked to protect and maintain the garden’s heritage and aid its development. The main east-west axis below the house has been widened to align its delineating box hedging with the Manchurian pear alley to the west. Large garden beds above the house terrace, faced with Beechworth granite, have been replanted and a new kitchen garden established beyond a swimming pool, where high, rendered walls are clothed in Boston ivy Parthenocissus tricuspidata – an arresting sight in autumn.

A new orchard of about 40 heritage and newer varieties of apple, quince, pear, peach, cherry and citrus has been planted on the hillside north-east of the garden since 2014 and a simple maze cut in the mixed native grasses and introduced pasture of the paddock.

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