Open Gardens Victoria – Verdicus

Set on nine acres, Verdicus is retired landscape designer and former Home Beautiful gardening writer, Bruce Honey’s extraordinary home garden located in rural village of Tylden.

Verdicus, which means ‘green circle’, is a beautiful demonstration of unrestricted creativity. Without the constraints of a client brief, Bruce has created a garden that combines picturesque and formal design styles, applying circles in many forms to create intense and controlled garden spaces within an informal park-like setting.

The garden hasn’t come without challenges. Tylden’s undulating landscape experiences wet, cold, frosty winters and long, hot, dry summers, as well as heavy soils—all contributing to many planting successes and failures.  

Structural plantings include avenues of trees, formal hedges, and groves of birch trees. These complement more densely planted areas such as the blue garden, white borders, iris axis, crescent parterre, tapestry garden, hub garden, and vegetable garden. 

All garden areas have been developed and constantly changed over the last ten years and show beautiful sensitivity in their use of tones and flower colour. The main residence and surrounding gardens were more recently completed and nestle seamlessly into the established landscape.  

Bruce will lead two garden tours each day, one at 11am and the second at 2pm.