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| My children photographed by Shona Henderson in the garden in April |
My parent's house is in Stirling, in the Adelaide Hills. The Adelaide Hills are incredibly close to the city - Adelaide itself is very flat with the hills cradling the edges of the city, and you can be in Stirling in about 15- 20 minutes from the CBD up the freeway.
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| View towards the hills through the trees |
This is not my childhood home. My parent's decided to move into the hills around ten years ago, when they fell in love with the garden, and then the house (in that order, it was unrenovated). The house and garden are an original "Hill Station" property - Stirling was developed as a place for wealthy Adelaide families to have summer houses, so that they could escape the heat of the plains when temperatures regularly climb to 35 - 40 degrees C during summer. Stirling temps are around 5 degrees cooler than down on the plains - I usually pack cardigans even in the middle of Summer, as the house is igloo like regardless of the outside temperature. There are a large number of quite large houses and beautiful gardens in and around Stirling, and the freeway and the tunnel have made it a very easy trip from the city, rather than the full day it used to be when the houses were originally built.
My parent's house was built by an Adelaide family who lived there in Summer only. The house is in what would be called "Scottish Baronial" style (with much more Australian verandas added), and has a little tower that has far reaching views. The garden was laid out in a Victorian style with lots of circuitous gravelled pathways.
A few generations added to the garden - the original owner travelled through Japan just after it opened to the West, and brought back a lot of Conifer seeds, which were planted all through the garden and are now enormous trees.
Some of the interesting features include the red Chinese Bridge, pagoda style trellising down the hill, a grotto (which we have put tacky plaster fairies in for the children to find), a jacobs ladder (stairs), and The Monument which is a very large urn on plinth at the end of an allee of pencil pines which Shona Henderson photographed my children near (that was the Italian influence in the garden).
It is overall around 20 acres, and has a large collection of rhododendrons and camellias This time of year is really beautiful in the garden when they come into bloom.
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| Rhododendron |
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| Camellia |
It is an absolutely magical place, it very much has a "secret garden" type of feel with the scent of decaying wood, moss and bark. It's very still and quiet, apart from all the native parrots that make quite a racket at times. It's so lovely for my children to play in and explore, we are very lucky.
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| over the bridge to the Jacob's Ladder |
It was nice to just wander about on my own today in the garden taking some photos while the children played, and think about my mum, who loved the garden so very much.
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| three copper beeches on the front lawn |
And I've linked this post up with Jane from Life on Planet Baby's Blog Post of the Month
