The Healing Garden at the Heide Museum of Modern Art, Bulleen, Victoria
Built on the land of the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung peoples
Openwork
When John and Sunday Reed moved to Heide I cottage1 in the late 1930s, the land leading down to the Yarra River had been cleared for dairy farming and there were few trees. Over four decades, they transformed the property into a series of romantically named decorative and productive gardens: the Wild Garden, the Orchard, the Heart Garden, the Doll’s House, the Violet Tunnel and, of course, the Kitchen Garden.
Evaluating the original garden at Heide I puts me in mind of an appraisal, where an everyday object is given an intrinsic value plus a heightened value because of its provenance. The garden made by Sunday Reed and her collaborators was a perfectly lovely garden, albeit one modelled on fairly traditional English cottage gardens and French potagers, an approach in stark contrast to the progressive
