Castlemaine's Festival of Gardens - part 1

I had a lovely day on Sunday visiting beautiful Castlemaine and it's Festival of Gardens. The open garden festival is a bi-annual event running over two consecutive weekends, and features some stunning gardens! 

I am going to have to do this post in two parts - I took heaps of pictures and am finding it very hard to cull the images!  This first part is the beautiful rambling country garden of the Burnett Gallery & Garden.

 The Burnett Gallery & Garden features a beautiful old traditional brick house, with a very long garden stratching down to a creek.  

 

 

The garden was a fabulous riot of colour, texture and pattern - nature at her absolute finest showing off her creations in all their glory!  I love these purple Irises with their delicate watercolour petals. 

 

 

I fell in love with this garden, partly because it reminded me of a very English country garden.  The garden had a wildness to it - it wasn't too structured or perfect, with a mix of flowers and plants jostling for space.

 

 

I'm such a fan of poppies in a garden with their intense colour, tall gangly structure and beautiful large papery petals.  Even the seed pods have a wonderful sculptural quality to them.

 

 

I also love blue flowers in a garden, so calming and the blue tones are off set perfectly against the yellow-green leaves. 

 

 

 

 

A perfect spot to sit and soak up the sun and the beautiful surroundings.  Sooo lovely....

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Kangaroo sculptures in the garden made from old corrugated iron sheets.  Cute!