From across the seas: the gardenesque at Vaucluse House

Blue mist flower

Bartlettina sordida

With its springtime display of fluffy pastel-blue flower heads, this unusual and spectacular ornamental shrub makes an eye-catching and exotic addition to the shrubbery at Vaucluse House. Native to the cloud forests of Veracruz, Mexico, it had reached Sydney by 1871, when J Goodenough, gardener to Captain Robert Johnston, displayed a plant (then known as Hebeclinium ianthinum) at the Horticultural Society of NSW. Its ‘splash of lavender-coloured loveliness’ was still drawing attention in a 1948 issue of The Australian Women’s Weekly.

Native to Mexico
Introduced to Sydney by 1871

Flame vine

Pyrostegia venusta

This spectacular orange-flowered climber was introduced to the Sydney Botanic Gardens in 1825 from its native Rio de Janeiro. By 1866 the Journal of Botany British and Foreign was describing its ‘elegant festoons of orange-coloured blossoms’ trailing over Sydney garden trellises together with bougainvillea and wisteria. At Vaucluse House, the vine grows over a wirework arch at one of the shrubbery’s entrances.

Native to Brazil
Introduced to Sydney in 1825

Mexican viper

Maurandya barclayana

Charles Darwin observed the twining growth of the Mexican viper in his 1875 work The movement and habits of climbing plants. In 1878 the Illustrated Sydney News recommended the ornamental climber for Sydney’s climate, along with wisteria and plumbago, commenting that ‘plants, which in England require stove or green-house treatment, grow here with a luxuriance quite astonishing’.

Native to Mexico
Available to Sydney gardeners by 1843

Sandpaper vine

Petrea volubilis

The sandpaper vine, named for its roughly textured leaves, was introduced to Europe from Mexico at the end of the 18th century. In 1875 the British Journal of Horticulture, Cottage Gardener and Country Gentleman endorsed the showy two-tone flowered climber, writing that it had fallen out of fashion ‘while the ends of the earth are being ransacked in search of new plants’. In Sydney, nurseryman Thomas Shepherd listed it for sale at the Darling Nursery in 1851.

Native to Mexico
Commercially available to Sydney gardeners by 1851

Tree fuchsia

Fuchsia aborescens

Seeds of the deep pink-flowering tree fuchsia were first transported from Mexico to England in 1824. In 1886, The Gardeners’ Chronicle described ‘a large profusely flowered specimen’, planted out in the cool conservatory at the Surrey home of George Macleay, son of botanical collector and NSW colonial secretary Alexander Macleay. George, also a natural history enthusiast, inherited Elizabeth Bay House and its surrounding gardens in 1865. It grows on the west side of the verandah at Vaucluse House.

Native to Mexico
Available to Sydney gardeners by 1860s

Violet churcu

Iochroma cyaneum

This hummingbird-pollinated shrub was collected in Ecuador for the London Horticultural Society by German botanist Karl Theodor Hartweg in the 1830s. In 1874 Melbourne’s Weekly Times wrote it was ‘well worth growing in shrubberies, being a strong-growing plant, with dark blue tube-shaped flowers in bunches, and nearly always in flower’.

Native to South America
Commercially available to Sydney gardeners by 1850

Dahlia

Dahlia cv.

In 1836 colonial secretary Alexander Macleay received a consignment of dahlias from London, among them the evocatively named Bey of Algiers, Dutch White, Fringed Crimson and Black Turban. Dahlias were hugely popular in the 19^th century 1800s, with plant breeders enthusiastically cultivating the gorgeous Mexican blooms to create an explosion of horticultural varieties. In 1864 the Sydney-published Horticultural Magazine praised ‘the brilliant and infinite variety of [the dahlia’s] splendid colours, combined with its easy management, growing and flowering in every soil and in every climate’.

Native to Mexico
Available to Sydney gardeners by the 1830s

Snail vine

Vigna caracalla

The snail vine, named after its violet curlicue petals, was introduced to Europe from South America by the Portuguese and cultivated by the royal gardeners at Hampton Court Palace as early as 1690. Sydney horticulturist William Macarthur listed it for sale at his Camden Park nursery in 1857.

Native to tropical South and Central America
Commercially available to Sydney gardeners by 1857

Marvel of Peru

Mirabilis jalapa

Colonial botanist Charles Fraser first noted the marvel of Peru growing in the Sydney Botanic Gardens in 1827, describing its ‘perfect’ acclimatisation to the region. The fragrant ornamental perennial, popularly known as the four o’clock plant, bears multi-coloured flowers in red, pink, yellow, and white, which open during the late afternoon and continue to bloom until morning.

Native to Peru and Central America

Growing in the Botanic Gardens, Sydney in 1827

Agapanthus

Agapanthus praexox

The agapanthus became a favourite addition to English greenhouses after the royal gardeners of William III and Mary II introduced it to Hampton Court Palace in 1692. In her Ladies’ companion to the flower-garden (1841), the popular English garden writer Jane Loudon recommended the ‘Blue African Lily’ as ‘a noble ornament to an architectural terrace, or a fine object on a lawn’, displayed in pots once it had been brought to flower. In NSW, however, the hardy perennials flowered freely: in 1860 English naturalist George Bennett described the agapanthus growing at the Botanic Gardens in Sydney as an ‘interesting exotic’ well suited to the warm climate.

Native to southern Africa
Commercially available to Sydney gardeners by 1843

Bird of paradise

Strelitzia reginae

The bird of paradise plant, with its spectacular orange and blue ‘plumage’, was introduced to the Royal Gardens at Kew in 1773 by the plant hunter Francis Masson, who had sailed to the Cape with James Cook’s Resolution the year before. At Kew, Sir Joseph Banks devised the botanical name of the plant in honour of Queen Sophie Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, the wife of his patron, King George III.

Native to southern Africa
Commercially available to Sydney gardeners by 1851

Giant honey flower

Melianthus major

This large shrub was introduced to the Botanic Garden in Sydney before 1828, grown as much for its glinting silver serrated leaves as for its spectacular maroon flowers. While it rarely flowers in Europe, Sydney’s warm climate favoured gardeners with considerably more success: at the September 1843 Floricultural and Horticultural Exhibition, the ‘dark blossoms’ of the Melianthus were a notable attraction.

Native to southern Africa
Commercially available to Sydney gardeners by 1843

Pelargonium

Pelargonium sp.

Pelargoniums were among the very first ornamental plants to be introduced to Australia: First Fleet surgeon Arthur Bowes Smyth selected the plants at the Cape of Good Hope in October 1787, describing ‘scarlet geraniums [pelagorniums] in full blossom’ in his cabin. By the 1860s Robert Henderson’s Camellia Grove Nursery in Newtown boasted numerous cultivars of the ‘estimable plant’, among them varieties named pandora, lady young, fair Ellen and garibaldi.

Native to southern Africa
Introduced to Sydney in 1788

Clivia

Clivia miniata

Clivias first flowered in Britain in the greenhouses of notable plant collector and breeder Lady Charlotte Clive, Duchess of Northumberland, for whom the genus was named in 1828. Today Clivia miniata, with its dark strap leaves and clusters of brightly coloured flowers, is an Australian gardening staple, tolerating drought well and flowering profusely in the shade. C. nobilis was the first clivia to reach Sydney gardeners, among a ‘splendid collection’ of plants introduced by botanist J C Bidwill from England in 1844. Both species grow in the gardens at Vaucluse House today.

Native to southern Africa
Available to Sydney gardeners after 1844

Belladonna lily

Amaryllis belladonna

These blush-pink autumn flowering bulbs from the Western Cape Province are particularly suited to the Australian climate. According to the 1867 edition of Sydney’s Horticultural Magazine, ‘The family Amaryllis seems to have made this colony their home, and as they are perfectly hardy, we advise their general cultivation’. The species flowers after its leaves have died back, earning the colloquial name ‘naked lady’.

Native to southern Africa
Commercially available to Sydney gardeners by 1843

Plumbago

Plumbago auriculata

London nurseryman James Veitch noted this blue-flowering Cape native growing in William Macarthur’s shrubbery at Camden Park in 1864, alongside plants of sweet bay, oleander and lilac. The scrambling ornamental, popularly grown as an informal hedge, likely arrived in NSW with early ships travelling via the Cape of Good Hope. Plumbago, hardy and fast-growing, flowers almost year-round in Sydney’s long growing season and requires cutting back several times a year.

Native to southern Africa
Available to Sydney gardeners by 1848

Plume poppy

Macleaya cordata

The Scottish botanist and naturalist Robert Brown named the ‘cordate-leaved Macleaya’ for his ‘much valued friend, Alexander Macleay, Esq., Secretary to the Colony of New South Wales, whose merits as a general naturalist, a profound entomologist, and a practical botanist, are well known’. (Brown had unsuccessfully courted Macleay’s daughter Fanny, a botanical illustrator.) Macleay acquired the feathery-flowered specimen for his garden at Elizabeth Bay in 1840.

Native to China and Japan
Introduced to Sydney by 1840

Camellia

Camellia japonica 'Alba Plena'

Camellias sent directly from Canton (Guangzhou) were already growing in the Sydney Botanic Garden by the early 1820s, when they were still a relative novelty in Europe; colonial secretary Alexander Macleay donated another, ‘Alba Plena’, in 1825. This beautiful white formal double, which dates back to the Song dynasty (960–1279), was one of the first Chinese camellias to reach England in the early 1790s. At Vaucluse House, pink and white varieties were planted in a striking alternating pattern and, along with immortelle daisies, famously adorned the coffin of the late William Wentworth.

Chinese cultivar
Introduced to Sydney Botanic Garden in 1825

Azalea

Some of the exotic plants originally grown at Vaucluse House were likely sourced from Michael Guilfoyle’s Exotic Nursery at Double Bay. His 1851 catalogue lists 15 varieties of azalea – flowering members of the Rhododendron genus, whose centre of species diversity is in the Himalayan region. Several varieties of azalea, including this bright fuchsia example, are today cultivated in the pleasure garden at Vaucluse House.

Native to the Himalayan region
Commercially available to Sydney gardeners by the 1840s

Cherokee rose

Rosa laevigata

This rapidly growing Chinese rose with waxy white petals, golden stamens and savage thorns had become naturalised throughout the American South by the late 18th century – the origin of its common name. In NSW it was often used for hedging: in 1869, the Sydney Mail praised it as ‘the finest and most economical evergreen hedge in cultivation’; a year earlier horticulturist J W Morton reported planting a hedge a quarter of a mile long at the Tirranna estate in Goulburn. At Vaucluse House, the rose is trained over a wooden structure, in keeping with the gardenesque taste for rustic ornamentation.

Native to southern China
Available to Sydney gardeners by 1843

Wisteria

Wisteria sinensis

Vaucluse House has long been associated with the wisteria entwined around its harbour-facing verandah. The original vine, Japanese wisteria (W. floribunda), was planted sometime after the 1860s and became famous for its springtime display: in 1918 The Sydney Morning Herald described it as ‘a veritable “bit of Japan” set in a dear Old World garden’. Visitors flocked to see it in flower, especially between the 1920s and 40s when its blooms smothered the front of the house. After the vine succumbed to borer in the 1960s it was replaced with W. sinensis, the Chinese wisteria, which Colonial Secretary Alexander Macleay had introduced to his garden at Elizabeth Bay in the 1830s.

Native to China
Introduced to Sydney by 1836

Confederate rose

Hibiscus mutabilis

The flowers of this celebrated Chinese hibiscus open white in the morning; by evening, they have deepened to pink. (The common name derives from their former abundance in the American South.) One of the first plants to be introduced from China to Europe, in the early 17th century, the old-fashioned perennial made its way to the Sydney Botanic Gardens directly from Canton (Guangzhou) in the early 1820s.

Native to China
Introduced to Sydney by 1823

Butterfly bush

Buddleja davidii

This central and western-Asian native bears long, narrow cones of densely packed mauve flowers, each with an orange eye. The flowers attract butterflies which feed on the honey-scented nectar. It is a tough, vigorous-growing deciduous shrub with an arching habit. Every winter the Gardens team gives the purple and cream buddlejas at Vaucluse House a hard prune to encourage strong new canes and prevent them becoming overgrown and unkempt.

Native to central and western Asia
Related Buddleja spp. available to Sydney gardeners by 1843

Fried egg plant

Gordonia axillaris

The first Gordonia plants to arrive in England, via the British colony of Penang, were originally classified as camellias due to similarities in flower form and deep green foliage. The glossy-leaved flowering shrub is colloquially known as the fried egg plant because of its frill-edged white petals and golden yellow stamens. Commonly planted in Australia as a suburban street tree, it puts on a winter show when few other plants are in flower.

Native to China, Taiwan and Vietnam
Introduced to Sydney in the late 19th century