A Taste of Tasmania: Spring Gardens, Cradle Mountain & Gourmet Delights
ITINERARY:
The following itinerary describes a range of gardens and other sites which we plan to include. Some are accessible to the public, but others require special permission which may only be confirmed closer to the tour’s departure. The daily activities described in this itinerary may change or be rotated and/or modified in order to accommodate alterations in opening hours, flight schedules and confirmation of private visits. Participants will receive a final itinerary together with their tour documents prior to departure. The tour includes breakfast daily, lunches & evening meals indicated in the detailed itinerary: B=breakfast, L=lunch and D=evening meals.
Hobart – 4 nights
Day 1: Saturday 16 November, Arrive Hobart
Morning airport transfer for participants arriving on the ASA designated flight
Time at leisure (optional visit to the Salamanca Market)
Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens incl. the Tasmanian Community Food Garden
Welcome Drinks
Participants travelling on the ASA ‘designated’ morning flight will be transferred from the airport to our heritage hotel, a 19th-century sandstone mansion, which is in the historic area of Battery Point and a short stroll from Salamanca Place’s Georgian warehouses that now house galleries and boutiques. Those taking alternative flights should meet the group ready for our afternoon tour.
On arrival there will be some time at leisure to explore Hobart’s colourful Saturday Salamanca Market as the hotel check in is 2.00pm.Salamanca Market is on the Hobart waterfront and is an eclectic mix of more than 300 stallholders. You can buy some locally produced fare for lunch, or dine in a nearby café, and it’s a great place to meet the artisans, watch buskers and soak up the atmosphere while you browse stalls with jewellery, handcrafted timber items, vintage collectables, pottery, plants and flowers.
Our program will officially commence this afternoon with a guided tour of the Royal Botanic Gardens, including the Tasmanian Community Food Garden which was completed in 2013 on the site of the original ‘Pete’s Patch’ developed by gardening guru Peter Cundall. This working organic production and display garden, with a multitude of veggie production practices has a working example of the original six-bed crop rotation system made famous in the original patch. The site today is used extensively for filming on ABC television’s Gardening Australia program.
We’ll visit the only place outside of the sub Antarctic where you can see the biodiversity of subantarctic plants from Macquarie Island and other subantarctic islands between Tasmania and Antarctica. The gardens also have collections of Tasmanian plants and noteworthy areas include the ‘Friends’ Mixed Border’ and the Japanese garden. We end the day with Welcome Drinks at the hotel. (Overnight Lenna of Hobart Hotel)
Day 2: Sunday 17 November, Hobart – Huon Valley – Glazier’s Bay – Hobart
Crawleighwood Nursery and Garden, Huon Valley
Long Table Lunch at Fat Pig Farm, Glazier’s Bay
Our first visit is to Crawleighwood, at Nicholls Rivulet in the Huon Valley. Here, Penny Wells and Pavel Rusicka have created a 2-hectare garden comprising rhododendrons, Japanese maples, woodland perennials, rainforest species and native Tasmanian plants. Crawleighwood contains at least one specimen of each Tasmanian conifer, including the iconic Huon pine.
Our sumptuous long table lunch will feature food grown at Fat Pig Farm in Glazier’s Bay, the home of chef Matthew Evans, former restaurant reviewer and presenter of the SBS show Gourmet Farmer. The show is filmed at the farm and between courses we’ll tour the 70-acre mixed farm which has a 1.7-acre market garden, rare Wessex saddleback pigs, beef cattle, beehives, fruit orchard and micro-dairy. (Overnight Lenna of Hobart Hotel) BL
Day 3: Monday 18 November, Hobart – Neika – Russell Falls – Hamilton – Hobart
Sally Johannsohn’s Garden & Nursery, Neika
Russell Falls, Mount Field National Park
Prospect Villa & Gardens, Hamilton
This morning we travel to Neika in the foothills of Mt Wellington, where plantswoman Sally Johannsohn has created a 2-acre, contemporary perennial garden to complement her nursery called Plant Hunters. Sally was ‘guest gardener’ at Chanticleer, one of America’s most imaginative and exciting public gardens in 2014 and since then has concentrated on succession planting, adding more bulbs and annuals to extend the flowering season. The garden has rich basalt soils supporting many unusual perennials and shrubs from Asia, North America’s woodlands and Europe, which show the beauty and variety of ornamental plants.
Next we drive to Russell Falls at Mount Field National Park which is part of Tasmania’s World Heritage Wilderness Area. Featured on Australia’s first stamp, Russell Falls consists of two vertical drops; the 20-minute return walk to the falls is on a good track and boardwalk through lovely rainforest. The walk passes through towering swamp gums and areas close to the falls are framed by stunning tall tree ferns. A light lunch can be purchased at the Waterfalls Café and Gallery.
At Prospect Villa, overlooking the village of Hamilton, Helen Poynder has spent more than 35 years creating two different gardens surrounding her sandstone home. The romantic English garden, divided by hedging, overflows with roses, clematis and delphiniums. It has a white garden, herbaceous border, urn garden, round garden, secret garden and long walk. On the hotter western side house is a formal Renaissance-style garden inspired by visits to Italy. In the late afternoon we return to Hobart for an evening at leisure. (Overnight Lenna of Hobart Hotel) B
Day 4: Tuesday 19 November, Hobart – New Norfolk – Derwent Valley – Hobart
Rosedown Gardens, New Norfolk
Sumptuous lunch at the Agrarian Kitchen, Farm & Orchard, Derwent Valley
Gardens of Corinda, Glebe
This morning we travel northwest to the region of New Norfolk, the residential heart of the Derwent Valley which has a rich history, quality produce and pretty rural scenery.
Hundreds of roses bloom at Rosedown Gardens, a 4.5-acre garden transformed from orchards and hopfields by Ian and Brenda Triffitt into a garden with an emphasis on roses. The garden is relaxed and romantic and surrounds a 1840s riverside cottage set against towering eucalypts. We’ll be wowed by gorgeous heritage, David Austin and Alister Clark roses which team with spring flowering perennials and shrubs. Hedged grass paths weave between specimen trees and vine-covered arbours and more roses and iris surround a big pond.
We’ll have a sumptuous paddock-to-plate lunch at the Agrarian Kitchen, a restaurant committed to reconnecting the kitchen with the land. The restaurant is on a 5-acre working farm with an extensive vegetable garden, orchard, berry patch and herb garden. Many heirloom plants are grown using organic principles and rare-breed Wessex Saddleback and Berkshire pigs, Barnevelder chickens, milking goats, a flock of geese and honeybees are also in residence.
Returning to Glebe, a suburb of Hobart, we visit the enchanting gardens of Corinda, which compliment the Italianate Victorian home built in 1880 by former Hobart lord mayor Alfred Crisp. The 1796 sqm property is divided into garden rooms with different effects, some are romantic and a little wild, others very formal with box hedges. The garden’s sculptural feel is created by hedges of pleached linden, espaliered fruit trees, a cobblestone courtyard and topiary animals. (Overnight Lenna of Hobart Hotel) BL
Launceston – 3 nights
Day 5: Wednesday 20 November, Hobart – MONA – Broadmarsh – Launceston
MONA – Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart
Weston Farm, near Broadmarsh
This morning we travel to the Berriedale Peninsula and the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA), an art museum that is the antithesis of the traditional gallery. It was created to be shocking, educational and entertaining with the confronting themes of passion, death and decay explored in unflinching detail. The controversial artworks are all from the private collections of arty eccentric David Walsh, a mathematician and art collector who made his money perfecting algorithms that let him beat casinos and bookies at their own game. Like it or not, you’ll be talking about it for years.
Nearby is Weston Farm, a small family business specialising in exquisite Peony roses, award-winning extra virgin olive oil and fresh farm produce. Horticulturist-turned-farmer Richard Weston and his wife Belinda purchased the farm in 1992 and transformed a bare 5.3-hectare property, about 30 minutes north of Hobart, into a successful mixed enterprise. In 2012 Richard was awarded the prestigious 2012 Nuffield Scholarship sponsored by Impact Fertilisers and the Tasmanian Government to investigate white asparagus production for the gourmet market, and in 2016, Weston Farm won the Delicious Produce Awards for their Smoked Paprika.
Richard and Belinda will show us their beautiful working farm, where everything conforms to organic and sustainable farming practices. Beyond the house and vegetable garden is the olive grove and open fields of peonies which will be at their peak when we visit. Weston Farm has over 30 different varieties, colours and forms, varying from soft voluptuous double pinks, dramatic bright crimson, delicate single whites, antique semi double corals and everything in between.
We shall then enjoy a lunch in the garden and sample some of the fresh farm produce that the family grows for fine restaurants such as The Source at MONA and their own café, Pigeonhole, in Hobart.
In the late afternoon we continue our drive north to the Peppers Seaport Hotel in Launceston, a waterfront hotel built on a former dry dock at the confluence of the North Esk, South Esk and Tamar rivers. (Overnight Peppers Seaport Hotel, Launceston) BL
Day 6: Thursday 21 November, Launceston – Longford – Carrick – Glengarry – Launceston
Woolmers Estate, National Rose Garden of Australia, Longford
Hawthorn Villa, Carrick (subject to confirmation closer to the date)
Garden of Jodi Broomby, Tamar Valley, Glengarry
Today we begin with a visit to Woolmers, a World Heritage-listed convict site with rose gardens displaying all the recognised rose families and one of the finest collections of historic roses in the southern hemisphere. It also has a grand productive vegetable garden. The 82-hectare property, founded in 1817 by prominent grazier and member of parliament, Thomas Archer, includes a two-part manor house, coach house, extensive outbuildings and convict cottages.
Hawthorn Villa is a Victorian gothic revival property situated on a hill with views over the countryside and the Liffey River. Its two acres of parklike gardens include a National Trust Listed grove of magnificent sequoias that were thought to have been planted more than 150 years ago, predating the house. Nicole and Innes Pearce moved to the home in 2003 and have created the two-acre garden from scratch. Innes is a former landscaper and has reflected the home’s symmetry in the garden which has extensive use of clipped box hedging. Areas of the garden have a maturity that belies the actual age of the garden as some of the plants have been rescued and re-homed. There are almost 100 individual, old English-style topiaries and a 40-year-old wisteria is the centrepiece for the white garden, which includes white iris, pentstemons and foxgloves. The white theme is continued elsewhere with a white dovecote and doves.
This afternoon we visit the private gardens of Jodi Broomby, located in the Tamar Valley, a region of premium vineyards, scenic pastures and forests. Jodi Broomby is a dedicated plantswoman and when she isn’t milking cows, she spends all her free time in the garden and home nursery. She uses plants to create structure in her garden by layering them from tall shrubs at the back down to smaller plants at the front. Her roses include many David Austin varieties which she teams with favourites like species geraniums and delphiniums and less common perennials like sanguisorba and phuopsis, morina, Aquilegia rockii and verbascum. (Overnight Peppers Seaport Hotel, Launceston) BL
Day 7: Friday 22 November, Launceston – Lalla – Pipers River – Launceston
The Pear Walk Country Garden, Lalla
Lunch at Bay of Fires Winery, Pipers River
Karen Johnson’s Garden, Pipers River
Today we begin with a visit to The Pear Walk country garden in Lalla. Remarkable garden walks and arches, created in the early 1900s by Frank Walker, a Kew trained plantsman, are hallmarks of this historic garden. The garden has a fairytale ambience and the centrepiece is a 500-foot-long pear arch with 24 trees on each side, twenty feet apart. New trees have been planted to replace those that have succumbed to age. Rhododendrons, azaleas and bulbs bloom beneath the tree canopy. The owners are restoring the historic arbour walk, which has magnificent trees including the original tree fern, liriodendron and cypress. More recent features include a laburnum walk, climbing roses and parkland gardens.
Today we enjoy lunch and wine-tasting at the Bay of Fires Winery, which is nestled in lush towering woodlands along the banks of the Pipers River. The Pipers River farming area has emerged during the past decade as Tasmania’s premier wine-growing district. Although the industry is small and new by national standards, the wines produced within the region are acknowledged as among the best in Australia.
Landscape designer Karen Johnson is, for the first time, opening her own home garden which she has developed on a 100-acre property, with one kilometre of Pipers River frontage and views to Mt Arthur. She’ll show us how she created a home garden using a blend of native and exotic plants on a windy, hilltop site. She moved there in 2010 and lived in the shed while establishing gardens and building an architect-designed black steel and blackbutt timber home. She’ll share her thoughts on designing for a view, the marathon of river weed removal and revegetation, swap tips for building productive vegetable gardens and provide insights on the advantages of working with a garden designer. (Overnight Peppers Seaport Hotel, Launceston) BL
Cradle Mountain – 3 nights
Day 8: Saturday 23 November, Launceston – Westbury – Cradle Mountain
Culzean Gardens, Westbury
‘Devils@Cradle’ – Tasmanian Devils Sanctuary
We begin today with a visit to the Culzean Gardens (pronounced ‘cullane’), a 13-hectare property with almost 3 hectares of parklike gardens and a 3-acre lake fringed with thousands of iris. The home was built in 1840 and many significant driveway trees were planted in the 1870s. The property has hundreds of conifers and mature trees, rhododendrons and azaleas and hundreds of roses.
In the afternoon we continue our journey west to Cradle Mountain-Lake St. Clair National Park, an integral part of Tasmania’s World Heritage area. The region is characterised by rugged peaks, deep gorges, glacial lakes, heathlands, Button grass moors and ancient forest.
Following some time relaxing at our hotel, we’ll meet Tasmania’s most famous animal, the Tasmanian devil. They look cute and cuddly but have a ruffian personality. We’ll also learn about the devastating facial tumour disease threatening these Tassie natives. Our early evening visit allows us to observe the amazing night-time antics of these devils at feeding time. (Overnight Cradle Mountain Hotel) BLD
Day 9: Sunday 24 November, Cradle Mountain – Nietta – Cradle Mountai
Dove Lake Walk
Cruickshanks Lookout, Leven Canyon
Kaydale Lodge Gardens, Nietta
Early this morning our coach takes us to Dove Lake for a six-kilometre, two-hour walk around the lake. Much of the track, which is under the towering shadow of Cradle Mountain, is boarded for easy walking. We’ll see Glacier Rock and walk through the tranquil Ballroom Forest where myrtle-beech trees are festooned in moss. On our walk we’ll be on the lookout for Australia’s only cold-climate deciduous tree. Nothofagus gunnii is also known as tanglefoot as bushwalkers sometimes get caught in its twisted, ground-hugging branches. You’ll only find it in Tasmania! Note: If you prefer to sleep in you can take a leisurely half hour stroll along the walking track at the rear of our hotel.
We’ll return briefly to the hotel before setting out for Leven Canyon, Tasmania’s deepest limestone ravine. Here, a well-maintained track (20-minute return walk), takes us to Cruickshanks Lookout, which provides breathtaking views of the canyon floor 275 metres below (where the Leven River flows), and views of Black Bluff and the surrounding countryside.
Just north of Leven Canyon lies Kaydale, a 2-hectare garden, created by two garden-obsessed generations of the Crowden family. The four gardeners have their own interests and gardens include a grand rockery with a waterfall, one of Tasmania’s best collections of deciduous trees, a vegetable patch, a pear walk with 27 espaliered trees, woodlands garden with a stream and Japanese style zen garden with raked gravel and bonsai. Featured plants in November include peonies and waratah. (Overnight Cradle Mountain Hotel) BLD
Day 10: Monday 25 November, Cradle Mountain – Barrington – Mole Creek – Chudleigh – Cradle Mountain
Jennifer Stackhouse’s Garden, Barrington
Wychwood Garden, Mole Creek
Old WesleyDale, Mole Creek
Melita Honey Farm, Chudleigh
You’ll remember today as one of the best days you’ve ever spent touring gardens!
Jennifer Stackhouse is a renowned Australian garden writer, editor and author of several gardening books who will, for the first time, open her one-acre Barrington garden in Tasmania’s lush northwest to an interstate garden group. She moved there from NSW in July 2014, attracted by the timber Federation home set in an old garden with a small orchard and mature trees that had been lovingly planted and tended for 28 years by keen gardeners. The area she now calls home enjoys a cool climate with high rainfall and has rich red soil. We’ll be able to admire foxgloves, poppies, peonies, clematis, roses, rhododendrons and dogwoods, hear about the changes she has made and what it’s like making a ‘cool’ change.
Most people think that Wychwood is Tasmania’s finest garden and today you get to decide for yourself. Wychwood was nothing more than a paddock in 1991 and today mixes sweeping borders of rare perennials and heritage roses with an outstanding contemporary design unlike any other garden we visit. The garden is a work of art with inspired planning and use of materials and plants that ranges from subtle to surprising. The most talked about and photographed feature of the 1-hectare garden is a medieval turf labyrinth but you’ll also love the winding privet hedges, a heritage apple orchard with resident geese, birch copse, water features and woodland.
Old WesleyDale is a glorious English style garden that started in 2001, aided by a backdrop of mature trees and hawthorns from the 1940s that create hedges in the wider landscape. Features include a walled garden for vegetables, picking garden and glass house, a terrace garden and aviary, ha-ha walk, lake walk and an amazing sculptured elephant edge created from honeysuckle (Lonicera nitida) that will have you reaching for your secateurs once you get home!
Bees do much more than just pollinate and at Melita Honey Farm you can look into a glass-backed hive and see the queen bee laying eggs and the workers spinning the nectar into liquid gold! They produce 50 varieties of honey, nougat and 12 flavours of honey ice cream. How sweet is that! (Overnight Cradle Mountain Hotel) BLD
Day 11: Tuesday 26 November, Cradle Mountain – Longford – Launceston Airport
Brickendon – a World Heritage-listed Colonial Farm Village, Longford
Farewell Lunch at Josef Chromy Wines
Transfer to Launceston Airport (arrival approx. 1600hrs)
Brickendon, like Woolmers, was settled by William Archer, in 1824 and has been owned and farmed by the same family for over 180 years. Members of the fifth generation of Archers are now tending the gardens. We’ll see the convict buildings of the farm village and check out the roses, shrubs and some of the oldest trees in Australia including oaks, elms, pines, cedars, yews and lindens and gardens with cool climate specialty plants like old fashioned roses and clematis.
We conclude our tour with a farewell lunch at Josef Chromy Wines, set among old English gardens and stands of 100-year-old oak trees, and overlooking a picturesque lake and vineyard. Acclaimed as one of Australia’s top 10, the cellar door is housed in the original 1880s homestead. The restaurant matches the best local regional produce with award-winning cool climate wines. BL
Physical Endurance & Practical Information
Physical Rating
The number of flags is a guide to the degree of difficulty of ASA tours relative to each other (not to those of other tour companies). It is neither absolute nor literal. One flag is given to the least taxing tours, seven to the most. Flags are allocated, above all, according to the amount of walking and standing each tour involves. Nevertheless, all ASA tours require that participants have a good degree of fitness enabling 2-3 hours walking or 1-1.5 hours standing still on any given site visit or excursion. Many sites are accessed by climbing slopes or steps and have uneven terrain.
This 11-day Cultural Garden Tour of Tasmania involves:
- A moderate amount of walking mainly during outdoor site visits, often up and down hills and/or flights of stairs and uneven terrain
- A moderate amount of coach travel, several on winding mountainous roads
- The daily schedule generally involves an early-morning departure (between 8.00-8.30am), concluding in the late afternoon (between 5.00-5.30pm)
- 4-star hotels with 2 hotel changes
- You must be able to carry your own hand luggage. Hotel porterage only includes 1 piece of luggage per person.
- It is important to remember that ASA programs are group tours, and slow walkers affect everyone in the group. As the group must move at the speed of the slowest member, the amount of time spent at a site may be reduced if group members cannot maintain a moderate walking pace.
- ASA tours should not present any problem for active people who can manage day-to-day walking and stair-climbing. However, if you have any doubts about your ability to manage on a program, please ask your ASA travel consultant whether this is a suitable tour for you.
Please note: it is a condition of travel that all participants agree to accept ASA’s directions in relation to their suitability to participate in activities undertaken on the tour, and that ASA retains the sole discretion to direct a tour participant to refrain from a particular activity on part of the tour. For further information please refer to the ASA Reservation Application Form.
Practical Information
Prior to departure, tour members will receive practical notes which include information on weather, clothing and what to pack.