Simon Griffiths
Hanging on the wall by the front door of Harry and Min Youngman’s home is an Edna Walling garden plan. It’s the renowned designer’s plan for Ardgartan, the Youngman’s pastoral property at Grassdale, south of Hamilton, in Victoria’s Western District.
The property takes its name from Gaelic, meaning ‘high garden’ or ‘corn on the hill’.
More than 80 years have passed since Walling, commissioned by the Youngman family, visited the property, and it is fascinating to see both the garden’s plan and the mature reality.
Ardgartan is particularly special as it is one of only a handful of gardens that retain strong elements of Edna Walling’s original ideas.
Harry and Min maintain Edna Walling’s original garden plans. Many of Walling’s ‘signature plants’ can be found here, including silver birches, Prunus and aspens. Cotoneaster surrounds the garden while camellias are shaded by the house.
The classic Edna Walling garden feature — a silver birch by a beautifully articulated curved stone wall made from rocks sourced on the property. Stone walls were also a Walling trademark. She believed that the stone should be sourced locally, to avoid jarring with the landscape. At Ardgartan, local stonemasons collected rock from around the property.
Some of Edna Walling’s signature design features include stonework, and plantings of Prunus and silver birch, as seen in this view from the rose garden.
In the less formal part of the garden, a pretty woodland provides shelter from the cold south-westerly winds.
Harry and Min maintain Edna Walling’s original garden plans. Walling originally designed the garden to complement the homestead, which was built in 1857.
Standing on the verandah gives an elevated view of the rose garden — two white lilacs border the far end, and signal the descent to the lower levels of the garden and the paddocks beyond.
Dachshund Olive is one of two dogs on the property.
Lulu the labrador is Ardgartan’s other canine resident.
White lilac planted by Min in recent years.
A splendid display of pink David Austin roses.
The pale apricot bloom of the floribunda ‘Iced Ginger’ in the rose garden at Ardgartan.
