Open Gardens Victoria – The Barwitian Garden 

While the garden itself was untouched, this opening offers a meaningful opportunity to support local communities and businesses and to reconnect with a landscape shaped by resilience and care.

Set on Taungurung Country near Mansfield, The Barwitian Garden is widely celebrated as one of Australia's most evocative examples of naturalistic planting design. Created over seven years by acclaimed garden designer and artist Ralph Bristow, the garden unfolds across a former paddock beside the Broken River, now transformed into a semi-wild landscape of around 20,000 plants. Sweeping curved beds echo surrounding hills and waterways, blurring the boundary between cultivated garden and natural environment.

Visitors are invited to experience the garden at a moment of seasonal transition, when late-summer energy lingers and perennial plantings retain their structure, movement and colour. Drawing on global and local plant species, the garden supports biodiversity while reflecting Bristow's painterly approach, where art, ecology and place come together in a living, ever-changing landscape designed for immersion, observation and quiet inspiration.