Heritage Hill Museum

Benga and Laurel Lodge Gardens historically preserves the community of Greater Dandenong's significant middle-class heritage in Melbourne. 

Period gardens, open for picnics, viewing, and functions.

Also open for photography and filming (enquire within)

House & Garden Tour with Devonshire Tea/Lunch/Workshops available

1 acre landscape

Exhibition spaces available

Star Magnolia (Magnolia stellata cv.)

Benga (1936) Tudor Revival style, by Frederick Ballantyne. Garden was established and tended by Dorothy Hart before WWII

Benga was established as the first oral history centre in Australia.

St James Anglican Church (1864), one of the oldest buildings in Dandenong, still operating. Its' garden features 100 year old elm trees, and a memorial garden...

Laurel Lodge - where 2 Moreton Bay Fig trees (Ficus macrophylla) stand, planted approximately 1885

"...A red gum forest had previously covered the area where Dandenong was built in the 1970s ...only a few remained as the area developed... the gardens help us understand how people in the past related to their environment."

www.heritagehill.com.au

Opening Hours: 

Mon - Fri: 10-4pm

Sun: 12-4pm

Gold coin donation

My Backyard St.Ivy

My Acer palmatum taken today - Bonsai; approximately 8 years old, 70cm tall. Its' leaves are only just yellowing, while its mother tree is now a brilliant red... *sigh.

Acer being repotted few months before

roots trimmed down

in the new pot just before the weird 2012 Melbourne summer kicked in - a really heavy mothertrucker!

terrible photograph, I know; taken by my old phone. Acer when about 7 years old, no manipulation just yet.

Mum's winter melon (I think) blossom

baby blackbirds one spring morning

more of mum's reproductions

Choko (Sechium edule Cucurbitaceae - Chayote/Christophine/Chocho/Mirliton/pear squash/vegetable pear/Chouchouet [many names!]) in abundance!

Guilfoyle's Volcano

Not a literal volcano; there are 250 different species of plants growing around the landscape.

Agave geminiflora Agavaceae

http://rbgworkingwetlands.wordpress.com/stage-1-guilfoyles-volcano/

Bromeliads

Design plan

William Robert Guilfoyle Biography: 

http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/guilfoyle-william-robert-3678

Location: Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne, Gate C - between Guilfoyle Lawn and Eucalypt Lawn.

"Guilfoyle's original design had green lawns flowing out from the volcano rim like lava moving towards Nyphphaea Lake. But a re-interpretation, 'lava' flows as multi-coloured plants and mulches.

...Red and orange flowers and foliage, unusual mulches of crushed bricks, terracotta tiles, and coloured pavement... basalt boulders are scattered as if expelled by a violent volcanic explosion". - RBG Factsheet

"...Built in 1876 by the second director of the gardens, William Guilfoyle, the volcano - part folly, part reservoir...

The second coming of Guilfoyle's vision has taken three years from planning to construction. In an artistic display, large boulders from Port Fairy and smaller rocks and stones have been strategically placed around and down the cone to simulate debris spewed from a volcanic eruption. Red stones planted with flat succulents course down the sides, simulating lava flows.

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The volcano's bluestone-lined crater, now full of water, is home to floating islands, reminiscent of giant lily pads, with native and indigenous plants and water filtration systems that will eventually connect to a wider irrigation project.

A timber boardwalk winds around and down the cone, with its spectacular vistas of the city and surrounding gardens, and rusted steel handrails imitate reeds around a pond.

Two meeting places have been designed in the lower gardens under canopies of Queensland bottle trees and silk floss trees.

The design was created by resident landscape architect Andrew Laidlaw. The last steps in this historic botanic journey were the plantings.

Cacti and succulents in all shapes and sizes, with native plant material for a softer texture, dominate the landscape..."

Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/national/botanic-gardens-volcano-gets-ready-to-rumble-20100329-r8b2.html#ixzz1xAHIIVnT