In December 2014 we joined several hundred other visitors to this property as part of the Open Gardens Australia program to host a Christmas Fair to raise money for BlazeAid, a volunteer organization that helps communities recover from natural disasters.
Full story on the website below.
http://www.theherald.com.au/story/2724342/historic-bolinda-vale-open-to-visitors/?cs=28
Condensed from the website -
Bolinda Vale in Victoria’s Macedon Ranges has been in the hands of the same family for more than a century. Over the years it has seen some mighty changes. It first adjoined part of family patriarch WJT Clarke’s larger holdings of 100,000 acres that stretched from Melbourne’s north to Sunbury and into the Macedon Ranges. Majestic Rupertswood was then the family home.
Bolinda Vale didn’t become part of the family holdings until the Victorian gold rush of the 1850s. A bluestone homestead was built in 1878 on its 31,375 acres as the manager’s residence. Thousands of sheep and cattle grazed across the massive space.
It became the family’s prime residence in 1946. Its acreage was reduced in size by sale of subdivisions before World War 1 and subsequent soldier settlement acquisitions.
It sits to this day in prime position on the north-eastern side overlooking some of Clarkefield’s most impressive rolling hills. Throughout the years, the property has hosted royalty, featured in a major miniseries and raised generations of the Clarke family within its boundaries.
Today the latest generations are preparing to wind up a major transformation that has seen some of Bolinda Vale’s traditional English gardens make way for a lively Australian landscape of dry creek beds, waterfalls and sustainable wetlands.
Today at 5000 acres the property remains impressive. It remains a working farm with sheep and cattle. But the once-deep English-style garden beds are now host to a variety of native plants that better fit the terrain and Australian environment. While the rose garden has been expanded, the massive cypress hedges that were planted 80 years ago have been reduced in height “to capture the views from the kitchen”.
Lady Susannah Clarke enlisted the guidance of award-winning landscape designer Phillip Johnson, who during the landscape makeover won 'Best in Show’ at the prestigious Chelsea Flower Show in 2013.
There are magnolia trees in the front garden, planted by the visiting royalty, including HSH Prince Albert of Monaco, Crown Prince Hirohito, now Emperor of Japan and Prince Reza Pahlavi, the eldest son of the Shah of Iran.
Enjoy