When the first bride came up the driveway with a wedding proposal, Janet Storrier, who gardens at historic Hopewood House in the Southern Highlands’ Bowral, was surprised. But she said yes. A few years later Hopewood House is as renowned for lavish weddings as it was for lavish parties when it was the country estate of department store heir, Lebbeus Hordern.

While some gardens court brides by creating scenes specifically for weddings, with lakeside arbours and neon “love” signs, Storrier prioritises the needs of birds first, bees next and brides some way after that. And the brides love it.

Just married at Hopewood House in Bowral, NSW. Credit:James Day

“I’m after an overgrown, magical look out of Midsummer Night’s Dream – a place you can imagine Puck flying,” she says.” I’m totally selfish about it. I make the garden and the brides come along. Yet they fall in love with the feel of it.”

Since Janet and her husband, artist Tim Storrier, moved to Hopewood in 2012, the formal gardens have been loosening some of their stays. Lengths of box hedge have gone, the former croquet lawn is now a dry climate garden and the morning I spoke with her, she’d just had 12 Cypress leylandii chainsawed out. The brides are responding to the changes, and Storrier gets a kick out of the juxtaposition of an intricately detailed wedding dress set against the wilder parts of the garden.

With weddings having shown the way, Storrier is considering how the next events marriage for the Hopewood estate might be with art, in occasions that wouldn’t require a wedding invitation to enjoy the garden.

Weddings were equally unplanned at Hillandale, Sarah Ryan’s charming, and much more humble, garden in Yetholme. After the surprise success of the first proposal, windows and doors went into the old shed to offer an undercover option and Ryan lost part of her potting shed to new toilets, but the garden itself has not been altered by bridal demands.

A couple tie the knot at Hillandale. Credit:Zee and Cee Studio

“Brides and their families seem to love the whole atmosphere. It is kind of otherworldly here; they come down into the valley and are transported by the little creek, the green grass, the trees, flowers. They don’t necessarily know much about gardens, or the plants, they just enjoy the whole feel of it.”

For Ryan the joy of weddings is that they legitimise her pursuit of excellence in the garden. “Having a wedding coming up gives me an excuse not to go out – I have to have the garden looking good.” She also gets to see the garden from a different perspective. “Some of the photography just blows my mind. It’s almost like having amnesia and seeing this garden as if for the first time and I love that.”

Forget stories about bridezillas and their crazy demands, when faced with the beauty of a well-made garden brides are just like the rest of us; instantly besotted.

Hillandale is open as part of the Central Highlands Garden Trail, November 13-14.

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