I met OGV Selector Matthew through social media. He came around to check out my garden. and we spent an hour walking around and talking about the rare grevilleas I had planted. We shared our stories about our own gardening experiences and we got along like brothers. It was great! 

Matthew suggested I do an open garden as he said I have so many interesting stories about the plants I had collected and grafted over 20 years. I agreed! From here my job was to start getting the garden ready. I had roughly four months before the opening. Matthew, Nicole (Marketing Subcommittee) and the whole OGV team were so friendly along the way and the email and phone contacts made me feel well supported. 

I had a huge job to get the garden ready and this did stress me out from time to time I will be honest! But any questions I had I’d just run them past Matthew or email Nicole and they responded quickly to any concerns. 

Leading up to my opening, I was asked if I would do a radio interview with Gavin from ABC radio. This was great and a good way to share and promote my garden as well as Eden Rise - another garden opening nearby on the same weekend.

The social media promoting my opening was fantastic and I also made some short videos to post on Instagram that helped get the word out.

The day before my opening I met Lyn (Selections Subcommittee) who really inspired and encouraged me in time to open my garden the following day. She dropped over with Matt and helped set things up. 

The whole weekend of my open garden was amazing! The volunteers were a great help as well as my family and friends who pitched in too. Throughout the weekend I took garden tours twice a day. I walked groups of people through my garden while explaining the whole process of how I built the garden, what soil I used, why I chose the plants and I also did demonstrations on why I graft my plants. These were well received. 

This whole experience from start to finish was one of the best experiences of my life, so thanks to everyone involved. 

- David, Binchy’s Garden

It was firstly an honour to have my garden considered to be of a standard worthy to be “on show.”

The visitors who came were just lovely. They were so effusive in their praise and grateful for being allowed to share in it. They all kept commenting on how calm and tranquil the garden is and left saying how relaxed and recharged they felt. That is exactly what my aim was with the garden so it was music to my ears. They said there was not a leaf out of place. 

All the visitors were so respectful of being on private property and all had a delight in nature and love for plants. Any children that visited were delightful and seemed to stay for a long time!
In no particular order the things that generated the most discussion were my possum deterrents, the pond and waterfall, the tool board in the garage and the Feng Shui principles applied in the design of the garden.

People seemed to stay for a long time for such a small garden.

It was great to partner with another garden – Sculpture and Shade. Tony has been a dear friend of mine for over 35 years and his garden is very close to mine. His is a much larger garden and had a different edge to mine with the arty connection. I think our gardens were a good combination for visitors to get something different from each. 

We spurred each other on, as we did have to work hard to get our gardens ready for opening. Thank goodness there was the 15 month lead up time as all jobs were programmed in! Tony said this forced him to make some tough decisions about sprucing up and consolidating.

We’re both very grateful to our selector, Jane whose assistance and encouragement were very much appreciated and really the whole organisation did run very smoothly.

It was a great thrill to be a part of your program - it was a fabulous weekend and probably a "life highlight"!

- Catherine, Light and Shade

For many people a garden is a sanctuary, a place of repose and respite in a busy, chaotic world. I feel that now as I sit here in the stillness in my office. The window is open and I hear the rosellas cracking the seeds that they discover in the fluffy lucky dip of the spent artichoke flowers. This peace and quiet comes through no effort on my part. I am far from town and the gravel road is not busy. But the rosellas are here because of the garden and the trees we have planted over the past twenty two years. Which gives a deep satisfaction to this already sweet moment.

Why am I opening my garden? I ask myself every day. I walk through the garden and see mostly what still needs to be done before the various pairs of eyes of the beloved general public arrive. I wonder if that is the reason; to have a deadline for the innumerable chores that ordinarily I am happy enough to leave to later on? To put off. To procrastinate.

And surely there is more to it than that.

I almost opened it twice. I had prepared the garden through the beastly, dry summer of 2008/2009 and even though I winced as plants browned off on those awful, hot days, I was looking forward to welcoming another round of guests.

The Delburn fires flared up just days beforehand, roads were blocked and the opening was cancelled. It was a minor disappointment compared to all those who lost their lives and homes that year. But It has sat there as some unfinished business that I needed to revisit, thankfully in a much milder and more pleasant year.

It was a different garden then: so youthful. Now fourteen years later. it is developing some maturity and that in itself is cause for celebrating with an opening.

Talking to other gardeners in the local area who deal with the same climate and growing conditions and extreme weather events is one of life’s great pleasures. This region (the picturesque Strzelecki Ranges) is such a magnificent place to make a garden, but I feel we are a little underrepresented in the world of open gardens, I felt I could do something to redress the imbalance a little.

Getting ready for an open garden is like eating an elephant: achievable if approached one bite at a time. Every day there are little things I can do. This ongoing and pleasant pressure is amazingly creative. So many new ideas are popping up for how I can show the place off to its best. Not all of them are feasible in the time remaining, but I am enjoying the flow of the process all the same.

- Matthew, Clear Springs