The Cloudehill Woods are now open

August 30, 2024

Above: Michel Harbke busy in the Woods

Back in 1990 and the Sunday after Melbourne Cup, the ‘Rangeview’ woodlands happened to be open to visitors as part of Victoria’s Open Garden Scheme, and with time to spare, Valerie and I thought we might pop along. The day was wonderful and the rhododendrons magnificent and after an hour’s blissful wandering we strolled up the zigzag paths to say hello to the owners, Keith Purvis and John Turner. During this conversation, I mentioned I was looking for a few acres for some serious gardening. Keith told me the best person to talk to on the subject was Jim Woolrich, just a short walk up the hill. Jim had been blind for years by then, and probably because of this was always happy to chat, Keith told me. Though “do not ask him about his own place! It’s the loveliest five acres on the mountain but Jim has been pestered to sell for years and as soon as you raise the question he’ll ask you to leave.”

So, very long story short, that is how I first became aware of what’s now the spot we have made into Cloudehill. Jim died the spring of 1991, at 92, and months later his niece Sylvia McElroy rang asking if I might still be looking for land. So that Easter away we went on making a garden, and 32 years on we’re busier than ever.

Above: Work commencing at Cloudehill in 1992

Around 1996, I suggested to Keith that, if he liked, we could clear the old path between Cloudehill and his garden, and for those next years our visitors had opportunity to explore the astonishing and historic ‘Rangeview’ plantings going back to Ted Woolrich’s Rangeview Nursery. The nursery had thrived from WW1 to the early-70s, but the five acres had long-since turned to woodland. Around 2003 Keith thought it time to sell and new owners, Mary and Chez Mason, in turn were very busy those next years. Much effort went to paths, and to arborist work, and to several hundred metres of stone retaining walls, largely constructed by Aaron Condon. And all this time our garden visitors explored.

Above: The stone retaining walls of Rangeview, the top image showing the Azalea Patch

Just as Covid 19 arrived, the Masons decided to downsize and for the next little while Erin and Liam McIntyre were the owners. All lock-down there was considerable noise as they rearranged the house, turning it literally into a luxury Hollywood hideaway. Erin is an opera singer, has sung at the Met, while husband Liam played Spartacus, no less, in the Netflix series. Anyway, last October word was from Hollywood “we’re shooting another series and we need you”. So the ‘Woods’ were back onto the market and, Clive Blazey, in a tremendously generous act on behalf of the Diggers Foundation and Diggers members, and thinking also of the vital importance of gardening in an age of global warming (more on this in future newsletters) spent serious money buying the old place.

Above: Woolrich Estate from above

Now Clive was reuniting the old 1895 ‘Village settlement Block’, so an important nod to the history of the Dandenongs, and also he was doubling Cloudehill’s acres in one fell swoop. This, dare I say, makes us larger than such very famous gardens as Hidcote, Sissinghurst and Great Dixter, so all we need to do now is raise the level of our gardening to make us commensurate with those inspirational places. Something which will take a while I grant you, but why not try? So, as said, a very generous act on the part of the Blazey family, and something which I believe will be important to the future of Australian gardening. Especially, keeping in mind the disruptions the world is faced with these next years, and vital I think to how we will all be going about living our lives from now on. (And more on this anon.)

There is a lot more to this story and over the next little while I will be teasing out the loose ends. Suffice to say, these past wintry months Michel Harbke has been pouring his heart into the huge task of tidying up the Woods and over the next few weeks will have completed the job. Walking around, one thing visitors now see are carefully positioned heaps of ‘habitat’ debris, collected from all over the garden by Michel. Part of the inspiration for this comes from my trip to England this winter and visiting Great Dixter and Wisley. Both use fallen debris in this way to strengthen biodiversity. And here I will add, Great Dixter has recently been causing a sensation in environmental circles and partly due to such practices. An audit running since 2018 has proven these gardens to be the second most biodiverse spot in all the UK. This should be enormously encouraging to all of us as it shows gardening (sans pesticides) can be at the heart of safeguarding biodiversity. We just have to see what we ourselves can do in this way in the Dandenongs.