Botanical Visions
A horticultural history of Mount Macedon in the 19th century.
Learn how Australia’s most significant and beautiful collection of late 19th-century gardens began. Discover the realities of large-scale deforestation, and the influence of the plant-hunting movements on local nurseries and garden design.
We chat tree- side with Pat Kenyon, an arborist climbing a towering sequoia, uncover the secrets of a 150-year-old garden and visit the home of celebrated 19th century botanical artist, Ellis Rowan. Local legend and horticulturalist, Stephen Ryan, also explores how the botanical legacy of Mount Macedon continues to shape its gardens today.
A collaboration with The Gisborne and Mount Macedon District Historical Society
and supported by The Public Records Office of Victoria.
A living history
The project was developed through community collaboration- engaging local residents as key knowledge holders to help fill gaps in the historical record. The process of filmmaking itself became a tool for activating the Gisborne and Mount Macedon Historical Society archive—bringing documents, photographs, and oral accounts into new visibility and conversation.
Featuring interviews with horticulturists, gardeners, arborists, amateur historians and landowners, the series weaves together archival imagery with present-day footage of garden estates and public lands.
In this work, the living environment emerges not only as backdrop, but as an archaeological site in its own right—a repository of living history that connects past and present through its plant life, topography, and atmospheric memory.
This project was researched and filmed on the unceded lands of the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung, Taungurung and Dja Dja Wurrung Peoples. Botanical Visions briefly explores the devastation that white settlement had on aboriginal people and their lands. Elders from the Wurundjeri Cooperation were consulted in the making of this film.