A Field Of Dreams

Gardening on a massive scale in a cold climate.

- Wendy Moulton

In the fields of gardening and landscaping, it’s not often that you get the chance to build a garden of your dreams. As we all know, gardening is expensive, and it’s rare that a multi-millionaire is happy to spend some of their fortune on building a garden on a massive scale. But Garrick Hawkins, one of Australia’s wealthiest merchant bankers, and his wife, Evelyn, did just that when they built Mayfield Gardens in the unforgiving climate around Oberon in the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney.

They started out landscaping around their Georgian-style home, which has a wraparound veranda and 360° views of the countryside, but in 1984 the family purchased the surrounding farmland, expanding their gardens into it. Over time the project grew and grew into the gardens they are today, covering more than 160 acres. The spectacular water garden was started in 2005, and is now a 6-acre section of the garden that has been open to the public 363 days of the year since 2014. The rest of the gardens, which are the Hawkins family’s private gardens, are opened to the public only four times a year, and I have been told that it’s worth visiting on one of these special days.