Banool in Linden is a quintessential Mountains Garden reflective of the style and feel of the famous Norman Lindsay gardens in Faulconbridge. (Photo: courtesy Mid-Mountains Garden Festival)
Story by Gabiann Marin
As the Blue Mountains awaken to the vibrant colours of Spring, the Mid-Mountains Garden Festival is set to celebrate its 40th anniversary this September. This now biennial event is a much-loved tradition featuring a diverse array of local gardens, each offering a unique experience for visitors.
Over its four-decade long history the Festival has grown from a small local fundraiser into a much-anticipated local event, and this year will be its biggest ever: as it showcases nine gardens across Lawson, Linden, Woodford and Hazelbrook, encouraging us all to embrace and celebrate our connection to nature.
Key Points:
- The Mid-Mountains Garden Festival is celebrating its 40th anniversary this September. This biennial event showcases nine local gardens across the Mid-Mountains villages on September 14-15 and 21-22.
- The Festival is a community-focused event that raises funds for Hazelbrook Public School.
- The 2024 Festival features a diverse array of gardens, from formal park-style gardens to sustainable, rustic spaces. Visitors can also enjoy workshops, a plant stall, and a scavenger hunt.
Throughout the Mountains, buds are blooming, petals are unfurling and the glossy green canopy of leaves is stretching across the skies, offering us the promise of shade for the long summer months to come.
Spring is here and there is no better way to enjoy it than relaxing with a cup of tea amongst the fluttering of bird and butterfly wings, or wandering through a beautiful garden, bathed in the scent of jasmine and roses, our toes curling on freshly cut grass. Nothing says Spring quite like enjoying a beautiful afternoon in a much-loved garden.
Across the mid mountains many have been preparing their flower beds and hedgerows for the upcoming warmer weather, watched over by curious wrens and magnificent king parrots who twitter and screech appreciatively as gardens are planted and tended, bloom and explode with colour and life. As Robin Wall Kimmerer says, in her beautiful book, Braiding Sweetgrass, if you want to feel close to nature, plant a garden.
Binyang in Hazelbrook. Nothing says Spring like the Mid-Mountains Garden Festival this September. (Photo: courtesy Mid-Mountains Garden Festival)
Fortunately those of us without a green patch of land, or a green thumb to make it come to life, can still enjoy the benefits of these lovely spaces thanks to the 2024 Mid-Mountains Garden Festival, which is opening up nine local gardens to the greater community to explore and enjoy. Even if you have your own beautiful garden, the opportunity to have a glance at some other people’s gardens, for pleasure and inspiration, is something that can be hard to resist.
The Blue Mountains has a long and much-loved tradition of garden and Spring events, with the Leura Garden Festival and Blackheath’s Rhododendron Festival joining the Mid-Mountains Garden Festival as well-established events on the local calendar.
Forty Years Young
The Mid-Mountains Garden Festival, which was first established in 1984, is celebrating its 40th anniversary in 2024.
“We aren’t really trying to compete with Leura Garden Festival, which is absolutely amazing, but we have a different flavour,” Vanessa explains. “We want this Festival to be community focused. We want people to take the ideas they see back to their own gardens and create something for themselves.” This year we are also inviting local growers and nurseries to come, so visitors to the gardens can buy a small plant and take it home with them if they feel inspired.”
Vanessa and this year’s Festival Manager, Wei Clerkin, along with a handful of volunteers, have worked tirelessly in the months leading up to the event to ensure that this year’s Festival is accessible, inspiring and community focused.
“We’re not just showcasing gardens; we’re nurturing a sense of community,” Wei says. “It’s about supporting our kids’ school and creating a family-friendly atmosphere where everyone can find inspiration.”
Curator Vanessa (Front Right) and Festival Manager Wei Clerkin (Back Right) with the small band of volunteers who help make the Mid Mountains Garden Festival a reality. (Photo: V. Jones, courtesy Mid-Mountains Garden Festival)
The focus on community is evident in everything the Mid-Mountains Festival is about, from engaging with local gardens, partnering with local businesses, and of course raising funds for the local Hazelbrook Public School.
The event began as an idea to help fund the school, when Ruth Taylor, local owner of Hazelbrook garden Maple Lodge, approached the Hazelbrook P&C way back in the early 1980s with an idea to open her garden up as a fundraising event for the school. The Hazelbrook P&C seized on the idea and in following years the small single garden experience was expanded to include other like-minded locals who generously open up their gardens to help the kids. Over its 40 year history over 50 gardens have opened their gates and invited visitors inside.
The money raised each year has been gratefully received by Hazelbrook Public School, helping to fund everything from computers, to school excursions to the creation of the school’s own natural garden area.
All money raised by the Festival is donated to Hazelbrook Public School to help fund school activities and the school’s natural garden. (Photo: courtesy Mid-Mountains Garden Festival)
“The Festival has always been run by volunteers. There is such a sense of community here in the Mid Mountains so we have been lucky to have people who help out in so many ways. It’s such a big event, and it’s been run by a handful of volunteers, you know, with a lot of support from the community.”
Vanessa has been volunteering with the Festival since before her own child started at Hazelbrook School, inspired by the sense of community and generosity the Festival inspires across the Mid Mountains. Vanessa first got involved in 2017 as a general volunteer but before long she was helping to curate the Festival and was one of the key driving forces which ensured it survived beyond the 2020 and 2021 COVID Lockdown cancellations.
Tanglewood in Woodford is one of the most well-known of the Mid-Mountains garden favourites, having been part of the Festival since 1994. (Photo: courtesy Mid-Mountains Garden Festival)
Vanessa was delighted to bring the Festival back in all its glory in 2022, and is keen to ensure that it continues beyond her involvement.
“This is my last year as curator of the Festival,” she reveals, indicating that although she has loved being part of the its legacy, it is time for her to move on. As part of the hand over, Vanessa is working alongside Festival Manager Wei Clerkin, who will continue to oversee the event as it moves from an annual to a biennial event.
Wei is excited to be taking on the role. As a newer resident of the Mid Mountains, she has been awed by the generosity of all the volunteers, parents, students and locals who have banded together to make the Mid-Mountains Garden Festival such an enduring success.
“When my husband and I moved our family from Sydney to live in the Blue Mountains, it was because we had been searching for somewhere we could feel more connected to a community. Being a part of the Mid-Mountains Garden Festival reminds me every time that we’ve made the right decision. This is what a home should feel like.”
The dedication of these volunteers is impressive as it is no mean feat to co-ordinate such an event, with the curator having to liaise with potential garden contributors up to a year in advance, making sure they can offer a varied selection of styles, locations and experiences for the Festival across the four villages.
There are also a number of local businesses sponsoring the Festival, contributing goods, services or financial assistance to help make the event a success. Thanks to all this community support, this year sees one of the largest array of gardens in the Festival’s history, with properties in Hazelbrook, Woodford, Lawson and Linden.
“We just couldn’t do this at all without the generosity of the volunteers, sponsors and the garden owners,” Vanessa agrees.
Tundurra, Linden. This formal park-style garden harks back to the spectacular styles of European grandeur. (Photo: courtesy Mid-Mountains Garden Festival)
“I love to get new gardens,” Vanessa says, “because I feel like, you know, when people are coming to the Festival year after year, they want to see something new. It’s a lovely mix this year with some of the old gardens circulating back in as well. So, it’s fresh for the visitors.”
The Festival this year is also expanding in other ways, introducing workshops and a small plant stall in the local Scout Hall where local growers can sell their wares as a way to encourage Festival visitors to go from inspired garden enthusiasts to active gardeners.
Handmade artworks by the students of Hazelbrook Public School are the focus of a fun scavenger hunt taking place over the gardens. (Photo: courtesy Mid-Mountains Garden Festival)
“We are also having a scavenger hunt where visitors can search through the different gardens to spot original art pieces that the Hazelbrook students have been making over the year,” Vanessa adds, revealing that a similar scavenger hunt and art aspect was a huge hit in the previous 2022 Festival -something that she is pleased has turned into a continuing tradition for the event.
Another highlight of this year’s Festival is the addition of Lawson Garden, Frugal-lea, a sustainable garden space where the owners Andrew and Lauren Bray have combined their love of nature, art, creativity and sustainability to create a truly original and inspiring natural space.
Frugal-lea, Lawson. Eccentricity, creativity and sustainability: this garden expands our thinking of what a spectacular garden could be. (Photo: courtesy Mid-Mountains Garden Festival)
“It’s great, Andrew has a gate made of old pitchforks and these amazing sculptures made out of discarded bits of metal, and all sorts. But it’s also a very productive garden,” Vanessa says.
Frugal-lea is a great example of how a garden can be spectacular without spending a lot of money. “The name says it all,’ Andrew laughs. “It’s all about being frugal and finding ways to make things without spending a lot. Pretty much everything in the garden comes from garden sales or the side of the road. We even make the bricks for the garden beds and my shed from the soil right on site.”
Andrew was inspired to open up his garden because of the Festival’s connection to Hazelbrook school.
“I liked that it was helping the local school, putting back into the community,’ Andrew says, joking that he had not previously thought of opening his garden to visitors before he was ‘dobbed in’ by a friend of his wife, who alerted the Festival organisers to Frugal-lea’s unique, sustainable focus.
“We really do love having different kinds of gardens,” Vanessa confirms. “We have a very formal garden in Linden that is new this year, with park style topiary and hedges, we have Frugal-lea with its rustic charm, we have a native garden and a cottage style garden. We like to have a bit of everything, so that everybody feels like there’s something there for them, you know. And go away inspired.”
Andrew Bray agrees, revealing he got a lot of the ideas for his own property through observing other gardens while attending garage sales.
The variety of the gardens, the community ethos of the festival and the dedication of the volunteers, garden owners and local sponsors who support the festival ensure not only that the Mid-Mountains Garden Festival will have a productive and successful return in its 2024 season, but that it will continue to delight us all for many Springs to come.
Wind Borne, Hazelbrook; a quaint mountains cottage with a sustainability focused garden of natural rocks and native flora. (Photo: courtesy Mid-Mountains Garden Festival)
Get Involved:
- Visit the Festival. Experience the Mid-Mountains Garden Festival on September 14-15 and 21-22, 2024. Learn more at www.midmountainsgardenfestival.com There is a list of all the gardens opening this year as well as an FAQ section.
- Volunteer – If you’d like to get involved, you can volunteer to sit on a garden gate. You can choose a morning or afternoon shift on any of the four Festival days. https://volunteersignup.org/3JA4W
- Open your garden. If you have a garden to share next time, contact Wei Clerkin and the planning committee via the event webpage: www.midmountainsgardenfestival.com/contact/
- Sponsor or donate. Sponsorship is closed for 2024, however if you’d like to get involved next time, please get in touch with the organisers. If you would like to make a donation to the school, you can do so via the ticketing page. https://www.midmountainsgardenfestival.com/tickets/ (and scroll down)
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This story has been produced as part of a Bioregional Collaboration for Planetary Health and is supported by the Disaster Risk Reduction Fund (DRRF). The DRRF is jointly funded by the Australian and New South Wales governments.
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