Love Every Second of Winter in Sydney: Gardens and Green Spaces

Love every second of Winter in Sydney: Gardens and green spaces

Sydney, garden city

With Sydney hosting the inaugural Australian Garden Show from 5-8 September, exploring Sydney’s green spaces and gardens is sure to be a favourite wintertime activity. Cooler temperatures make for comfortable strolls outdoors, where you can discover hidden sanctuaries and rich flora and fauna.

The Australian Garden Show will be a spectacular collaboration of horticulture, design and landscaping, celebrating Australia's passion for the outdoors, and Sydney's unique garden aesthetic. Curated by award-winning landscape designer, author and gardener Myles Baldwyn, the show promises to be an iconic international event. Highlights will include display gardens designed by leading landscape architects, product showcases, and a high tea marquee which will transform after dark into a floral cocktail bar setting.

Explore Sydney's beautiful public gardens Feeling inspired? Explore these outdoor treasures, free and open to all:

The Bible Garden, Palm Beach This serene garden in Sydney's northernmost beach suburb is a series of gently descending, intimate grassed terraces leading down to a viewing area with spectacular panoramas across Palm Beach and Pittwater. There's a pond and a plaque explaining the garden's Christian origins and six decades of history. It's loved by locals for picnics, quiet contemplation and picture-perfect weddings.

Centennial Parklands This 360 hectare swathe of undulating parkland and woods in Sydney's inner east is the city's greatest green space. It encompasses Centennial Park, Queens Park and Moore Park, and contains heritage buildings, extensive native flora and fauna, a restaurant, cafe, kiosk, and visitor centre. In these three interlinked parks you can enjoy multiple outdoor activities including horse riding at the Equestrian Centre, cycling, rollerblading, football, cricket – or just long, rambling strolls in spots where you can't see a single piece of city skyline, and you feel as if you're in open country. The Park also contains two main areas of the Eastern Suburbs Banksia Scrub endangered ecological community.

The Parklands produces a regular blog which details everything happening in the Park, and visitors can also download the new iPhone app which includes a map and GPS locator, What’s On calendar, food and drink options and exclusive promotions and competitions. www.centennialparklands.com.au

Hyde Park Hyde Park is the city's central open green space and began life in the 19th century as a racecourse and sports ground. Today, it's a perfectly manicured urban oasis with a grand tiled, tree-lined central pathway, the Archibald Fountain, and the 1934 art deco War Memorial and Pool of Remembrance. On any day of the week you'll find a chess game in progress on the park's giant-sized board, and the lawns make an excellent spot to take a breather from the bustling metropolis just metres away.

Royal Botanic Garden This oasis of 30 hectares in the heart of the city occupies one of Sydney's most spectacular positions: winding along the harbour's edge around Farm Cove, with direct, up-close views of the Opera House. Established in 1816, it is the oldest scientific institution in the country and is home to an outstanding collection of plants from Australia and overseas. From the rare and threatened, to a romantic rose garden, the themed areas show nature's diversity. Special features include: Cadi Jam Ora - First Encounters, a display acknowledging the Cadigal - the original inhabitants of Sydney's city centre.

Chinese Garden of Friendship Darling Harbour houses one of the only Chinese gardens outside Asia. Initiated by the local Chinese community to share their rich cultural heritage and celebrate Australia's 1988 Bicentenary, the Chinese Garden is a lovely walled paradise which transports you into another place and time. The Garden was designed and built by Chinese landscape architects and gardeners, and is governed by the Taoist principles of 'Yin-Yang' and the five opposite elements - earth, fire, water, metal and wood. Explore a stunning landscape featuring waterfalls, lakes, exotic plants and hidden stone pathways, then unwind in the garden Teahouse with a drink and some Chinese delicacies.

Lex and Ruby Graham Gardens, Cremorne Point. This beautiful garden is also a living love story. The stunning patchwork of winding paths, plant beds and secret corners on the steep slopes of the Cremorne Point Foreshore was first planted with a single Elephant's Ear bulb, found floating in the rockpool down below in 1959, by local Lex Graham. With his new bride Ruby, he cleared decades of rubbish from the area, which had been used as a tip. The Grahams continued to tend the garden and it flourished over 50 years into a National Trust-listed showpiece. Although the Grahams have both

passed away, their peaceful oasis is maintained by the local council and is a permanent reminder of this kindly, outdoors-loving couple.

Lillian Fraser Garden, Pennant Hills This 3,426 sq metre woodland garden in north-west Sydney once surrounded the home of Dr Lilian Fraser, Australia's third qualified female biologist, born in 1908. During a career spanning 33 years, Dr Fraser travelled extensively in Australia and overseas, spending her holidays exploring bushland for new plant and disease specimens. Among the wide range of plants in her garden are some very special for their size or rarity, and displays include natives, davidia and dogwoods. Dr Fraser died in 1987 without family, so she bequeathed her garden to Hornsby Shire Council so it could be enjoyed as a public garden and park.

Lisgar Gardens, Hornsby If you love camellias, take a stroll through these delightful 2.6 hectares of sandstone terraced gardens in Hornsby, in Sydney's north. The garden was begun in 1917 by Dr Max Cotton, and by 1950 was planted with rhododendrons, azaleas, gardenias and other exotics in harmony with native trees and ferns, highlighting the eighty varieties of camellias. Some of the original camellias remain among the current ninety-plus varieties, and are now over sixty years old. The gardens also boast mass plantings of annuals, a pavilion, fish ponds, a gazebo, three waterfalls, picnic tables and a rainforest walk.

Swain Gardens, Killara Almost a secret, this secluded bushland garden is regarded by many as the most beautiful 3.4 hectares on Sydney's north shore. It was created by Arthur (Mick) Newling Swain on land behind his home, and when he died in 1973 it passed to Ku-ring-gai Council, which now maintains it. Swain Gardens features include meandering paths, flowering fruit trees, a rhododendrum walk , a giant metasequoia tree, and a bridge made from sandstone from the Tank Stream, excavated from underneath Swain's bookshop in Pitt St.

Koshigaya-tei Japanese Garden, Campbelltown This Japanese teahouse and garden adjacent to Campbelltown Arts Centre was a Bicentennial gift to Campbelltown from Japanese sister city Koshigaya. Behind the centre is the Sculpture Garden, which presents a series of changing exhibitions including the annual Sculpture by the Sea.

Paddington Reservoir Gardens Alongside Paddington's boutique retail strip, Oxford Street, you'll find an award-winning venue that's been completely transformed from its former lives as a 19th century reservoir supplying water for Sydney's population, and then a garage and petrol station. It is now State

heritage-listed and reborn as a stunning Romanesque sunken garden with a lake of contemplation at its centre, and a hanging garden canopy around the perimeter. Hailed as a blend of the ancient Baths of Caracalla in Rome and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, Paddington Reservoir Gardens even incorporates the site's original graffiti art in this unique transformation which won the Australian Award for Urban Design in 2009.

Garden activities Try these fun ways to immerse yourself in Sydney's green spaces:

Join an Aboriginal Heritage Tour at the Royal Botanic Gardens for a journey of discovery. Uncover the Royal Botanic Garden's rich Aboriginal heritage by exploring plant uses, culture, artefacts, and taste some bush foods. www.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au

Try an organic gardening workshop at Randwick's PIG (Permaculture Interpretive Garden). Containing a food forest, rain garden with water tanks, pond, compost bins, worm farms, lawn, native habitat garden, potting shed, BBQ area with picnic tables and an outdoor theatre space, this organic garden in Sydney's eastern suburbs is always open to the public and is a fun place just to visit. www.sydneyorganicgardens.com.au

Free Eco Meditation Sessions are a wonderful way to soak up the serenity of Centennial Park. They're at 8am on the fourth Saturday of every month, beside the park's Learning Centre. http://www.centennialparklands.com.au/activities/whats_on/health_and_fitness/medit ation

Gorgeous garden stores No longer just a place to buy seedlings, Sydney's garden lifestyle stores are as hip and pretty as the best fashion boutiques.

At Redfern's Garden Life, brothers Richard and Michael Unsworth have turned a love of horticulture and design into a retail hub offering gorgeous plants, pots and ornaments, a design studio and maintenance service. The store also houses the delicious courtyard Twig Cafe, championing sustainable and locally sourced produce. The Unsworths are involved in many green projects, including community gardens – and there's one right out back of the Redfern store.

In the Surry Hills design precinct, Par Terre Garden has fabulous European outdoor furniture and ornaments for the glamour garden, with some stunning bronze sculptures - a slice of Hollywood luxury in the Surry Hills design precinct. And not far away, Ici et La is famous for French cotton canvas deckchairs, which have a cult following among cool Sydney gardeners. This Surry Hills store is also a treasure trove of elegant French outdoor furniture. Tait in Redfern features beautiful, sustainable outdoor furniture, often made by specially commissioned artisans.

Garden to plate Sydney's love affair with gardening has captivated the restaurant scene, with top chefs growing their own ingredients on site for you to eat as soon as they're picked.

Check out Matt Moran's 150 sq metre kitchen garden at Chiswick in Woollahra, where he and a dedicated gardener decide on the best seasonal plantings. It's picked in the morning and on your plate by lunchtime.

At Three Blue Ducks in Bronte, produce-obsessed Darren Robertson and his fellow chef- owners have a permaculture garden in the backyard complete with chickens and a worm farm. The Grounds in Alexandria takes the inner city restaurant/garden a step further still. It's a sustainable speciality coffee outfit and cafe in a micro-farm with olive trees, vegetable patches and roaming poultry, and a bakery and resident horticulturalist.

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For more information on things to see and do this Winter in Sydney and for a full listing of Sydney events go to sydney.com/destinations/sydney/sydney-in-winter/love-every-second

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