Cloudehill is at Olinda in the Dandenongs, about an hour's drive from Melbourne. Burke's Backyard has made a point of visiting this spectacular garden over a number of years, and talking to owner Jeremy Francis. At Cloudehill Jeremy combines modern, cutting edge ideas with the best of the old fashioned gardening ideas, and an extraordinary use of colour.

Herbaceous borders

The magnificent herbaceous perennial borders, which are at their peak in summer and autumn, are grouped into two distinct colour schemes: warm and cool. The secret of achieving such a long flower display is to plant late, along with regular dead heading, deep watering and mulching. Orchestrating such striking colour combinations is incredibly difficult, and makes this a very high maintenance form of gardening. Jeremy changes many of the plants every year, and he aims to dig up the entire bed and replant every third year. He also likes to break up the large pools of colour with plants that add vertical texture, such as crocosmias (Crocosmia x crocosmiiflora 'Lucifer') and miscanthus (Miscanthus sinensis).

Green theatre

In one area of the garden there is a green theatre in the style of old Italian gardens. The lawn is bordered by a line of conifers (Thuja occidentalis 'Smaragd') which will eventually grow into a hedge, but at the moment they are only about five years old and look like a little row of green dwarfs, or perhaps a parade of little green soldiers. The stage is emphasized simply but effectively by two variegated cordylines (Cordyline australis sp.).

Sculptures

In a new experimental part of the garden where it is too steep to walk, Jeremy has used commedia dell'arte figures by Lazlo Biro to create a really bold element and a wonderful focal point. Commedia dell'arte was a stylised form of popular comedy developed in Italy in the 16th and 17th centuries. The figures have a connection with gardening that goes right back to the 1600s. At that time many of the gardens in northern Italy actually had green theatres, where commedia dell'arte troupes played.

Further information

Cloudehill is at 89 Olinda-Monbulk Road (corner Woolrich Road), Olinda, Victoria, 3788. It is open daily (except Christmas Day and Good Friday) from 10am-5pm.

Copyright CTC Productions 1999