Victorian Holiday Destination - part four

Back to Melbourne to spend 4 days with my girlfriend who I have known now for 60 years, and her husband. They live on 10 acres so plenty of room for the van. We went to the huge International Flower Show in Melbourne which I will do in the next post, but also visited  a Diggers Garden who are a major seed company in Australia.

 This garden was in  the town of Olinda, called Cloudehill.

Entrance

  A very large garden, with some wonderful plants and was once owned by a family. It is quite hilly and seeing it in the rain, spoilt the enjoyment of it traipsing up and down the hills.

Lots of little "garden rooms"

Into the open area where weddings and functions are held.

Area of the wild Garden, Raining as usual.

Once down had to go all the way up

 Had a lovely morning tea there though , and did a bit of seed shopping, mainly sweet peas, marigolds and garlic bulb shopping.

Huge garlic selection

A Gardner's Dream Wall

In the next couple of day we went to two converted disused quarries that are now beautiful gardens and man made lakes. The first one was  Wilson Botanic Park.

The entrance has a lovely rose garden and leads into walkways that go right around the lake with side paths to resting areas.

Rose Garden

My favorite rose

 Lots of great areas for family get togethers. Managed to see it without raining although overcast and quite cold.

Lake full of lillies

 Being a disused quarry there are lots of deep gullies to work with.

Bottom area of Quarry

Top level on left hand side  very bushy area.

View of  other side of lake.

The next  day was Royal Botanic Gardens at Cranbourne which was made up of Native Australian Plants representing the inland and coastal area. By now I was starting to feel I had walked miles.

Private party waiting for the bus

 We took a bus tour with a very informative driver quoting all the scientific names as we went along. It has been designed to represent the desert, coast, city living, and waterways.

This feature is enclosed so no-one can walk on it.

 
 The entrance is the start with the inland desert or outback.

Swales also at the Entrance

 Slowly we work our way through representations of Rivers.

Down by the riverside

Rivers.

The whole garden can be walked all around

The coastal area.

Coastal View

It did rain while touring around, and we got some protection from the open bus.

                                      One very large sculpture and waterfall of red cliffs.

Urban Landscape

Eucalpyt Walk

These few photos do not do it any justice and I highly recommend visiting this garden. Well designed, tells a story and picnic areas. A very large coffee shop and a lovely tourist shop with lots of Australian items. I bought a beautiful fine tea mug covered in australian flowers.

Next post I will show our visit to the International Garden Show held in Melbourne every year.

Till next Time.