An "exciting accident" brought Cruden Farm's new head gardener Lewis Barrett to Langwarrin when he landed in Australia, and he's fallen in love with the garden ahead of a busy summer. Mr Barrett previously cut his trade working on herbaceous perennials at the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew in London, a UNESCO World Heritage site, before taking some time away to travel.
He settled in Australia on a working visa, and for the past nine months has been working on "relandscaping and relifting the garden back to its former glory".
"Due to a combination of luck and some contact I had, I met the guys at Cruden Farm, and was just blown away by the English garden they had there and the story of Dame Elisabeth (Murdoch), and I've ended up falling in love with the garden and ending up working there myself," Mr Barrett said.
It's an exciting time he said, with Cruden Farm this summer playing host to Victoria's first dahlia flower trial. In collaboration with the Dahlia Society of Victoria, 15 untested dahlia varieties put forth by amateur and professional growers across the state are being planted and tended to across the next few months at the farm, before being judged in February and March next year.
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