Ballarat Gardens in Spring 2015

This weekend there were five gardens open for Ballarat Gardens in Spring. We visited two of them today.

The first was in Scarsdale, a treed area a bit like Lal Lal, so it was interesting to see how they had integrated the garden with the surrounding landscape:

 The shrubs between the lawn and the trees seemed to be mostly westringia of some variety, clipped into balls. There was a circular theme throughout the garden. Here are more clipped balls, and some circular doo-dads on a fence:

One side of the lawn area was defined by a lovely row of climbing roses, with lavender not quite in flower in front:

I was interested in this wall which has a lovely rose garden behind it:

 We were planning a brick wall of a similar height around part of our garden, but the engineers specified that it needed foundations 2 metres deep and 600mm wide, with piers every 2 metres. As that was going to be ridiculously expensive, we have a wire fence for now. This one is longer than we were planning, has no piers (except at each end), and has no evidence of wide foundations. I would also be very surprised if it has 2-metre deep foundations.

In the orchard, some of the trees have arches of conduit over them that are presumably to hold bird-netting later in the season:

I don't know the purpose of the straw bales around each tree. They may be to hold in mulch, to protect the tree from rabbits (would that work?) or to actually be mulch.

Native shrubs in another garden bed:

I liked this raised herb garden beside the house:

The garden we visited after lunch was on a larger-than-average suburban block. I liked their displays of succulents;

Their espaliered fruit trees:

 And this shady arbour which looked very inviting:

It was a lovely day for visiting gardens, sunny but not too hot.

Here's a link to last year's blog post. Ballarat Gardens in Spring 2014 for comparison.