Open Gardens Scheme: Bellevale

Today (2 April) Frances and I took ourselves off to the Australia's Open Gardens Scheme Plant Fair at Bellevale, Yass.  The history of the property is summarised in the link so I won't bother repeating it. 

We had expected that the event would cover:
  1. A tour of the fantastic garden;
  2. A bunch of interesting garden sculpture exhibits; and 
  3. Some interesting talks.
 Perhaps there would be some nice plants for sale as well.

What happened was slightly different to that.  So let us get into some photographs and commentary.

As a first point  it was about 100km from home so we didn't think we'd know anyone there.  In fact a fair collection of our friends were encountered.Proving yet again that one can't get away with anything round here!  Not, of course, that we would do anything that requires getting away with.

The house and garden were good examples of their kind but I think we have yet to get our standards back from some of the gardens we saw in the UK last year (with a staff of 20 looking after them).

 The sculpture exhibits were interestnig, although for some reason (possibly due to a mild case of OCD) many of my photos included dog sculptures!
Those with good eyes will detect that the family group of dogs (second image) could have been ours for a mere $1200!  The carved great danes were really good.  Then the models turned up.
It says something about the way the dogs had been trained, and their docile nature, that:
  • their owner (also owner of Belleville) allowed them out with about 500 people milling around; and 
  • they were quite laid back about receiving affection from a child.
Given that Tammy hammers the scales at around 3kg I enquired how must these refugees from Baskerville Manor weighed.  The male  goes 80kg and the female 75! 

Some of the other sculptures were bird oriented:

 The first of these images also gives an idea of the landscape around the property.


We only attended one talk, by the garden designer Michael Bligh.

He was absolutely top, with a a good balance of practical tips set within  some really good concepts and a few jokes.  His final comment was an old Chinese ploverb:
  1. To be happy for a day, get drunk;
  2. To be happy for a week kill a pig;
  3. To be happy for a month get married;
  4. to be happy ever build a garden!
We found the array of stalls

had a lot of interesting and unusual plants at very good prices.  So we bought up!

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