Melton and Macedon

We had a beautiful sunny day for a Horticultural Society bus trip to Melton Botanic Gardens and Mount Macedon.

Morning tea on arrival at Melton:

I have been to the gardens before, but I can't find it on my blog. Somehow must not have blogged about it.

The gardens are new, with the first eucalypts planted in only 2011. There are sections dedicated to plants from various parts of the world with similar dry climates, and an amazing collection of unusual eucalypts. See a map of the gardens here. The volunteers behind the garden have done a fantastic job so far, and have plans for more development in the future.

This is part of the garden devoted to plants from Western Australia and South Australia:

I was very taken with the grevillea in the centre of the photo. Below is another one by itself:

Isn't that an amazing plant? It is Grevillea magnifica. It comes from the south of W.A., and likes sandy soil. So that means it probably wouldn't survive in our clay. Too bad!

The gardens are full of colour:

Intense blue flowers on Lechenaultia biloba.

Intense gold of Banksia ashbyi:

Information board about the dryland eucalyptus arboretum:

 The biggest gum flower I've ever seen, with my hand for scale:

I'm not sure what species it is. The label I photographed was for Eucalyptus pyriformis, but pictures of that I've found don't match this one.

Another amazing flower:

This one is Eucalyptus rhodantha, or rose mallee. These flowers are also very large, about 7cm across. You can see an unopened bud below the open flowers (it's the pointy thing pointing down).

Last picture before we move on:

Fascinating gumnuts on Eucalyptus kingsmillii.

There is lots more to look at at the Gardens. Well worth a visit if you can get there. The nursery wasn't open today, which was unfortunate. But all the plants we have purchased there in the past are doing really well in our garden.

Our next stop was lunch at the top of Mount Macedon. I haven't been here since about 1982 - not long before everything was burnt in the Ash Wednesday fires of 1983.

Even the Memorial Cross is new since my previous visit - it was re-built by the Grollo brothers in the 1990s.

Young people:

This lookout is about 980 metres up, so is it worth risking your life to be a couple of metres higher than that? Is the view any different? Anyway, one of those lumps on the far horizon is our local mountain, Mt Bunninyong.

We left the mountain and went on to the town of Mount Macedon, best known, according to Wikipedia, for its "collection of 19th-century gardens and associated extravagant large homes". Here we visited the garden of Tieve Tara, which I have not been to before.

This bridge is covered in wisteria, which should be beautiful in a few weeks when it is out:

It is quite early in the season, so a lot of the deciduous plants are still bare. But there are touches of colour here and there, like this rhododendron:

And these yellow flowers on a tree (Corylopsis sinensis, fragrant winter hazel, according to Google):

Nothing was labelled in the garden, which was frustrating at times. Even the plants for sale had no labels.

A faint green tinge on the trees, and a bit of blossom:

The leaves and flowers on this rhododendron are very large. This time with a ruler for scale!

Another case where a label might have been nice.

The gardens are open in spring and autumn. It would be nice to see it in both seasons, to compare and contrast.

The last stop on the tour was a quick visit to two nurseries in town. On one side of the road, Stephen Ryan's Dicksonia Rare Plants, where he had a peony already in flower in the garden:

And across the road at the Mount Macedon Nursery I admired these garden sculptures by Jason Shaw's Freestyle Art of Sunbury:

But they wouldn't have fitted in the bus. (And were probably also quite expensive.)

Congratulations if you made it to the end of all that!