Victoria’s amazing mazes
KEEPING Victoria’s mazes looking spectacular can be a tall order, writes SARAH HUDSON
Aside from the clippers, a mate of stilts is each invaluable tool admitting that your garden is to include a hedge.
That's the best advice Arthur Ross can give.
As the maze-keeper for the Mornington Peninsula'session Ashcombe Maze, Australia's oldest, Arthur is often seen tottering around upon stilts, serving the dual purpose of reaching hard-to-get spots and besides finding profligate maze-goers.
The stilts are essential to make secure the 20ha ownership is in tip-top regulate, including two hedge mazes - one 3m high and 2m thick and consisting of 1000 cypresses - similar to favorably as the globe'sitting first circular rose maze, with 1200 roses, and a lavender perplexity of 10,000 plants in 70 different varieties.
The hedges are divide three times a year, although "cut" does not do justice to the artistry involved.
"I convoke it sculpting. The maze is irregular, not in unswerving lines, and the hedge is in peaks and spirals. It really is a alive part of art," Arthur says.
"I don't see myself as a gardener or gardener, I see myself in the manner that every engineer, a problem solver.
"When you fall into a garden that includes 25 acres (10ha) of woodland gardens (including ponds and waterfalls) then you've got to get the right people around you and make sure everything is not amiss maintained and repaired."
It is a last will and testament to Victorians' charity of aggregate things greensward - or possibly of getting lost - that the state boasts more of the nation's best mazes, with three on the Mornington Peninsula lone, and others dotted encompassing the state.
On the Midland Highway at Springmount, near Creswick, The Tangled Maze is a magical creation of climbers and twiners, such as wisteria, jasmine, honeysuckle and clematis, hovering over a bed of perennials.
According to holder Judy Morrison, who runs the maze with her husband, Noel, the aroma in spring is dreamy.
"But we've cleverly planted so there's event to see throughout the year, such as the ornamental fruit of the vine, which in fall of the leaf has wonderful colours," says Judy, a former farmer from Balmoral who moved to Springmount in 2004.
The Tangled Maze also has a recent heritage rose labyrinth, for example well as a "kid-proof" activity bewilderment made from maidenhair creeper.
The mazes are all a thinking of Judy'sitting greensward thumb.
In the 1990s "whenever the backside fell out of wool", Judy established a mail-order rose and perennial business, Mistydowns, what one. at this moment supplies about 900 rose varieties and thousands of perennials through the mail, online and at the maze nursery.
She was in like manner amenable for establishing the Cavendish Rose Festival and co-writing Gardens and Unique Properties of the South West.
Judy says it is this strong gardening knowledge that has been invaluable in operating the maze.
"The secret to gardening, whether it's at domestic circle or to this place, is like having a baby: stronghold them warm, fed and watered, mulching, with organic material and matter underneath that," she says.
Back at Ashcombe Maze, Arthur says they too have planted carefully to ensure the 30-year-old peculiarity has a scene at different ages.
"We have tried hard to get different things flowering at different seasons of the year," says Arthur, who has overseen the amaze ago 1998.
"So in fall the deciduous trees bring forth beautiful shows of red and fulvous. In winter the tree designs and camellias incite upon the body a show.
"In leap, there'session two million bluebells in the lower woodlands and therefore the revolution of time of roses start. In summer the lavender and roses are best."
And honorable in case you not succeed a part of the garden, Ashcombe Maze has bottled and cooked many parts of it.
While a small oil distillation fix is in succession location, entirely lavender is taken facing station for extraction to produce a range of soaps, spritzers, beauty products, oils and pot-pourri. Lavender is also used in teas, scones and thick preserve for use in the maze's cafe.
So has Arthur ever had to rescue any lost maze-goers?
"Not yet, although the stilts have helped in that. People evermore ask what happens if they breed obdurate. I tell them we've got roast chicken for dinner."
- MAZES IN VICTORIA
- Ashcombe Maze, Shoreham Rd Shoreham ph: (03) 5989 8387
- Tangled Maze, Midland Hwy, Springmount, ph: (03) 5345 2847; Mistydowns, ph: (03) 5345 2847
- Hedgend, Healesville, ph: (03) 5962 3636
- Boneo Maze, Fingal, ph: (03) 5988 6385
- Enchanted Maze, Arthurs Seat, ph: (03) 5981 8449
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