[People stand in a wide range of gardens throughout Australia.]

00:00:01:24 CLAYTON HOLMES: It's hard to say what comes first. Is it just for the beauty or is it for the botanical collection? 

00:00:10:00 CAROLYN ROBINSON: A garden is, to me, the expression of my aesthetic self using plants as the medium. 

00:00:18:06 ROBYN GODLEE: So gardens are part of what makes us human, really. You know, there's a restorative element to a garden. 

00:00:26:22 CHRISTINA KENNEDY: I never thought of myself as being particularly obsessive, but I think it takes an obsessive personality to do something like this. 

00:00:33:16 CRAIG BURTON: Gardens, for me, are a place of intense cultivation. Some gardens are cultivated for productivity. This place comes under the aesthetic. 

00:00:43:22 MICHAEL COOKE: I think that a garden sort of gives us just in a primal sort of way...just sort of connects us to our roots, I guess. 

[The title 'Planting Dreams' appears over a verdant garden. 
Text: "Eagles Bluff, Tenterfield, New England." 
In dry hills, a farmhouse sits nestled in a neat garden of native shrubs and trees. A stand of thick trees stretches behind the house. 
A blonde woman sits on a veranda. Text: "Carolyn Robinson, Lead Designer & Owner, Eagles Bluff."]

00:01:04:07 CAROLYN ROBINSON: Here at Eagles Bluff, because we're slightly lower than Tenterfield itself, 150m lower, it is warmer in the winter, hotter in the summer. And we live on a really dry continent. The weather at best is unpredictable, and I think it's very important that the plants that we choose for our gardens have a huge degree of drought hardiness. One of the reasons I love Eagles Bluff so much is because it is less frosty in the winter, so I have been able to grow many more drought-hardy plants like Australian natives. 

[On a brown grassy slope leading down to a rocky riverbed, cattle feed near a windmill. The house's polished wood veranda extends over a pond and looks out over brown fields stretching to a tree-clad mountain range. Native trees line the riverbed. A garden bed of low round plants borders a section of veranda. The pond extends from the veranda, the flat water reflects the distant mountains. A stand of tall trees grows behind a garden bed of shrubs.]

00:01:45:08 CAROLYN ROBINSON: We were definitely wanting a block of land with a river that was perhaps a little bit more wild, more quintessentially Australian. And I can still feel the excitement I felt. I was looking back down the river and I just couldn't imagine getting bored with looking at that view. 
There are two things I look at when I'm designing a garden. The first is connecting the garden to the house. The next really important thing is to connect the garden to the landscape. I try and enhance views, I try and work with the contours of the land. And shelter and shade are paramount in our hot summers. 

[Text: "Glenrock, Tenterfield, New England. Carolyn Robinson's first garden." 
Beyond the house, a group of garden beds contain small, shaped trees and shrubs. Large native trees tower above the beds which are bordered with stone and hedges.]

00:02:32:11 CAROLYN ROBINSON: Pete and I bought Glenrock in 1989. There was very little really Australian home-grown at the time, so the garden at Glenrock is very much more traditional. Glenrock was my experimental garden. I had to learn about the climate, I had to learn about the soils, I had to learn about design and I had to learn about plants. Whereas here at Eagles Bluff, the landscape is much more dominant. 

[Hills rise behind the more natural-looking garden beds. An array of shrubs frame the house, pond and mountain range. In garden beds, plants have leaves in contrasting colours, shapes and sizes. Pale rocks mottled with orange protrude inside and along garden beds. Throughout the garden, rocks are loosely piled to form walls.]

00:03:05:08 CAROLYN ROBINSON: And with the backdrop that I have here at Eagles Bluff, the landscape is so dramatic, it didn't take long to furnish a foreground for it. Probably one of the most important aspects that I look at is the foliage - the shape, the texture, the size and the colour particularly. Looking at our winter garden landscape now, I realise how important foliage colour is. And an important design premise for me is to incorporate elements of the natural environment. Living here in Tenterfield, we have an abundance of natural rock. And I started to feel the need or the desire to pick up stones and start building walls. 

[Text: "Horse Island, Bodalla, South Coast." 
Stone trellises wound with vines are reflected in a pond. Near a large farmhouse a narrow water channel lined with stone divides a wide band of lawn. Neat beds of native plants grow near the house. 
A dark-haired woman sits near the pond. Text: "Christina Kennedy, Owner & Lead Designer, Horse Island."
Calm lakes are divided by tree-covered islands. Tall native trees line a path running through lush grass. Beds of manicured bushes grow near a large, low house. A long curved bench sits in a sunny lawn. A portrait depicts a man with a neat full beard and intense dark eyes.]

00:04:08:10 CHRISTINA KENNEDY: Well, we're sitting in the garden here today at Horse Island, which is a place on the South Coast of New South Wales tucked in the estuary of a big lake system, the Tuross lakes. 
The garden covers quite a large area - like 10 hectares. My great-great-grandfather had a big garden nearby here, so I have that family connection. The island itself, it has a diverse range of vistas because it's hills and flats. There are many, many trees ranging from the mangroves on the foreshore and the casuarinas to all the eucalypts and lots of spotty gums. Some more densely forested areas and some open areas. So anything that I did was just an additional bonus. And I don't claim any credit, really, for the beauty of this place, because it was beautiful when we came here. 

[Pruned round shrubs contrast with the flat lawn, towering gums and the tree-lined lake. A still lake reflects thick trees and a man working in a small boat. A balcony looks out on a neat hedge, and the trees and lake beyond. Christina picks native flowers.]

00:05:31:08 CHRISTINA KENNEDY: But as we did a few things like putting in some powerlines, it opened up vistas. I saw possibilities. I do like to do things so that wherever you are, you can look all around you and you can see a beautiful picture. Well, I started to use Australian plants at the beginning, because I knew that it was going to be easy to learn about one sort of planting. And then, when I realised what these Australian plants were all about, I was happy to go with it. Well, we do have plant collections. The most interesting was put together by Peter Olde, Australia's resident grevillea expert. I love the fact that a lot of our beautiful plants here originated from Western Australia. 

[Text: "Willa Willa, Somersby, Central Coast." 
An open-sided pavilion overlooks a lake carpeted with lily pads. Colourful trees cluster thickly on the far bank. 
A man in a leather jacket stands by a long, winding hedge. Text: "Michael Cooke, Lead Designer."
A circular driveway and a low house are surrounded by trees. The rounded hedges curve past a towering tree.]

00:06:31:04 MICHAEL COOKE: So this is Wirra Willa and this is not far from home. It's also a garden that's almost as old as my own, so one probably started on 25 years ago. 
We originally designed a circular driveway that was very traditional. Works in with the old camellias, the port wine magnolia and the trees that were already there. And then from there, there's this amazing lake that really is the jewel in the crown. The lake is what supports the orchard. It's all the irrigation for the place. It comes down and gives us this beautiful backdrop to everything. 

[Conical junipers grow near a series of low straight hedges arranged in a pattern. Orange fruit is bright in and under orchard trees. A walkway of wooden boards curves through thick green reeds, past the lake.]

00:07:05:02 MICHAEL COOKE: From the house, we're actually able to walk on the bank of the dam to come up into a new area that we designed that's got almost like a little maze in through the front of it. From there, there's an area that may be sort of like a sculpture lawn. Then we can push further in through the orchard and there's sort of, like, this little sneaky area in the back of the dam where the water first comes in from the property up above. We thought this might be a good spot to put in a boardwalk. 

[Concrete walls are visible through shrubs. On the bunker roof, long, squat glass-topped compartments look down into the garage. Clusters of bushes grow nearby. The bunker overlooks trees, the house and the lake.]

00:07:33:04 MICHAEL COOKE: We've also been sort of creating this new garden that works in quite close to the house. So the house is connected to a new garage bunker. It's a more contemporary element. It feels partly submerged because we've also created a garden on the roof of the garage. So we can see the dam, we can see lots of elements of the garden just from that vantage point. The natural landscape is so amazing here, just with the gymea lilies, the angophoras, all the natural trees. 

[Strolling on the boardwalk, Michael passes plants with long, thin leaves that reach above his head.]

00:08:01:10 MICHAEL COOKE: It's quite untouched, the landscape itself, so the boardwalk sort of gives us an opportunity, I guess, to see the garden from a whole new perspective, I guess. And we don't need to do too much. So certainly, most of my designs, compared to other designers, are plant-based, but they're plant-based because I've spent so much time with plants themselves. 

[Michael walks past a wide range of pot plants arranged in neat rows.]

00:08:20:08 MICHAEL COOKE: I used to have a nursery in Sydney. So I used to go to people's homes, give them advice. And from then I sort of became more interested in design itself. 

[Text: "Hawthorn, Central Mangrove, Michael Cooke's Garden." 
A grass tree is topped with a bushy spray of long green needles. In a pool area, Michael strolls past a bed of plants that have broad spiky leaves.]

00:08:30:13 MICHAEL COOKE: I've been at my own place now for 28 years. So I used to take home those truckloads of plants every day and wonder what I was going to do with them. So then those lessons that I've learned at home have then taught me what to do for other people. But I think from then I sort of developed this interest in how to make a place work better for people. I like creating a mood, I like to create a space that feels comfortable to be in. You know, the same as an architect would with a home, you know, we can do the same thing in a garden. 

[Text: "Naval Memorial, Bradleys Head, Mossman, Sydney." 
A grassy hilltop lined with stone walls has a view of the blue waters of Sydney Harbour and the distant cityscape. A white ship's mast towers near the weathered stone walls of a circular gun emplacement.
A white-haired man stands on a decorated stone terrace. Text: "Craig Burton, Architect & Lead Designer." 

00:09:13:22 CRAIG BURTON: This particular place, I've had a long association with personally. It's Bradleys Head, within Sydney Harbour. It's an important place because there's different layers here. The Aboriginal layers are present everywhere. There's layers of defence, layers of public park, layers of national park. Bradleys Head is named after Lieutenant William Bradley from the 'Sirius' in the First Fleet. Its Aboriginal name is Booraghee or Talangai - 'watch out' or 'tongue', a tongue of land. And so it's natural that it was sought after as gun emplacements. 

[A path runs through trees. On one side, glimpses of water are visible through the foliage. Stairs curve from the terrace, down a grassy slope to a stone jetty. Long stone strips fan out from the stairs, forming amphitheatre seating across the grassy slope. Kookaburras perch on a large tree. Through the winding branches, skyscrapers are visible beyond the blue water.]

00:09:52:07 CRAIG BURTON On the headland, there's a definite contrast between the natural and the human-made elements. That contributes to its sense of garden, particularly within what I call Sydney's best open space, which is the harbour. I think people do enjoy the comfort of seeing the city from the bush. From the design team, as an urban garden for Sydney, being a fragment of Sydney Harbour National Park, one can look at Bradleys Head as being a remnant piece of indigenous flora, but parts of it are more natural than others. And so it has the illusion of being completely natural, but once you look at it very closely, you find that it's more of a construction. 

[Children perch in the thick sprawling branches of the large tree. People walk down the amphitheatre stairs to the stone jetty.]

00:10:36:07 CRAIG BURTON: Well, the real impetus for the projects came from the need to increase visitation facilities within the national park to create a gathering place for people to watch the yachting during the Olympics and things like that, and the first project that was realised was the wharf area amphitheatre. And the other aspect of it was to try and use sandstone as being harmonious with the sandstone that's on the site and harmonious with the sandstone fortifications. 

[Text: "Sea Peace, Ewingsdale, North Coast." 
A lake is surrounded by tall pine trees and thick reeds. 
A woman with short white hair stands in a forest of mature trees. Text: "Robyn Godlee, Co-Owner Sea Peace." 
Dense forest runs from farmland and up a steep slope. Mountains loom on the horizon. An elevated walkway runs along a tree-clad slope. Ferns and moss clad the sprawling branches of a huge tree. Smaller plants grow among trees with tall, straight trunks.]

00:11:21:08 ROBYN GODLEE: Sea Peace is a fairly substantial property for this area, which was previously a rural farming, grazing property. And it's just about five minutes drive out of Byron Bay. It's not just a straightforward property with regeneration of native species or endemic species. So it's become a bit of a collector's garden. 
It's subtropical for the most part, but the array of species that are here come from all over the world. So there are Madagascan plants, African plants. When we came across Sea Peace, it was ostensibly cleared with some gullies that were planted with... Oh, it had some original rainforest and had been replanted to some degree. And it's just been quite an adventure and a labour of love and a passion for Tony and I. 

[A walkway runs across a pond to a low house. Robyn and a white-haired man sit by the pond. Text: "Tony Maxwell, Co-Owner Sea Peace." 
Thin strips of wood form the roof and tall walls of a pavilion. Inside, small plants, including succulents and ferns, grow thickly in rock-bordered garden beds.]

00:12:14:23 TONY MAXWELL: The first thing is that we've both been very interested in natural history and conservation. But we didn't set out with the aim of creating a biological ark, but that seems to be the direction we've headed. And in the process, of course, we've met some wonderful characters. 

[A man with a white beard gives Robyn native fruit to eat. Text: "Harry Moult, Plantings & Property Manager, Sea Peace."]

00:12:33:16 HARRY MOULT: We're collecting mainly, you know, starting with local species, but going right through the spectrum of all the rare and endangered species of the subtropics and tropics and then collecting trees from overseas which in some places have actually disappeared in their native environment. 

[In the lush garden, a long-haired man stands by a tree. Its branches are covered with crow’s nest ferns, orchids, moss and other plants. Text: "Clayton Holmes, Orchid and Bromeliad Gardener, Sea Peace."]

00:12:49:09 CLAYTON HOLMES: So everything's going to be catalogued in digital and hard copy so that in the event that we're all dead, someone can come and work out what everything is. You know, to do justice to the plants and the amount of plants that are here and the rare species. Otherwise, if no-one knows what they are, then essentially it's sort of all been for nought. 

00:13:11:04 HARRY MOULT: I started off in reafforestation. We used to just go into bits of bush that were starting to regenerate species and take the weeds out. But now we spend a lot of our time planting trees, maintaining the weedscape. And we've been doing that now for 10 years in this session and some of the older forests are already self-managing, so we don't have to go back there again. 

[A lawn is surrounded by thick forest. Stairs wind through dense vegetation. Robyn moves along a covered timber walkway. A driveway runs through a gate made of a wooden beam resting on stone pillars. Still water reflects the towering trees surrounding it. Plants trail from long wooden planter boxes. Tony, Harry and Clayton chat by an array of harvested fruit and vegetables]

00:13:32:10 ROBYN GODLEE: I think originally, when we acquired Sea Peace, we really weren't thinking of a garden per se at all. But fairly early on in the piece, we were introduced to Lisa Hochhauser, who's a local landscape architect, and she was able to put together a master plan for us which created a revision of the way that you access the property. So we have the driveway that you come up now which is lined by the fig trees. The positioning of the lakes and the dams and those things that provide beautiful backdrops but also provide irrigation for the gardens, the plantation that we have and the organic gardens - the orchards and things like that. 

[Buttress roots weave from the ridged trunk of a tall fig tree. Text: "Prince Alfred Park, Surry Hills, Sydney." 
A white-haired woman stands near a narrow tree-lined track that's lined with mature trees. Text: "Sue Barnsley, Lead Designer." 
Skyscrapers loom near green parkland dotted with trees. A hill overlooks a swimming pool. Palm trees tower over the neat green lawns. 
A black-and-white photo shows huts and vegetable gardens in the park. In a photo, people are dwarfed by a huge ornate hall. Its roof is a massive half-cylinder that's flanked by two minarets.] 

00:14:18:18 SUE BARNSLEY: Prince Alfred Park, for us, was such an amazing commission. We were so lucky. It was such a joy to work on that project. We obviously inherited a landscape there that had been ironbark forest, and then cleared, made to Cleveland Paddocks, and then Benjamin Backhouse did a design in 1860 for this Intercolonial Exhibition where we had the incredible wedding cake of the exhibition building, avenues of trees. So in some cases, we were revisiting that work. For example, bringing back the meadows, completing lost lines of planting. And in other cases, we were really looking at the sustainability of this place. For example, the line of fig trees along Cleveland Street. That whole stretch suddenly became transformed with these lush grasses that cut out the traffic and really contained that edge of the park. 

[In the modern park, a line of benches stand near overgrown grass.
Tall colourful chimneys cluster on a hill covered with scrubby grass and shrubs. A man eats on a bench. Kids play soccer.]

00:15:15:15 SUE BARNSLEY: So it's an incredibly eclectic landscape because, obviously, we've got more playful elements and it is very much a local park, as well as a regional park. And people come there for picnics, there's always people playing basketball there, people are in the pool at the crack of dawn, there's dog walkers and the joggers. And it's got an incredible life across the whole spectrum of the day. Clearly, Prince Alfred Park demonstrates that it's a greener city in the sense that the quality of the open space has just improved. But I think it is a neck-and-neck race. We need to find more open space and we need to green it as well. 

[A flat rooftop overlooks city buildings and a park. In a rooftop office, bikes lean on a glass wall that looks through to a sunny garden. The small garden between two walls contains a tree, a thick band of tropical shrubs and a table and chairs. An archway and windows in garden walls frames terrace houses, skyscrapers and blue sky. Green pawpaws cluster on a tree. Text: "Roof Garden, Kings Cross, Sydney, Sue Barnsley's office garden."]

00:15:59:21 SUE BARNSLEY: So obviously a roof garden is a direct translation of that. So this little roof garden is a great space that generally our office is privileged to be able to use. So it is a little oasis of green in the densest suburb in Australia, really. So if you just need to sort of calm down, collect yourself, there's nothing like green to help you do that. 

[Traffic passes a sunken garden. Walkways overlook lines of slender brick archways, lawns, lush garden beds and a shallow rectangular pool of water.]

00:16:25:00 SUE BARNSLEY: And Paddington Reservoir is the most beautiful secret little spot. Not so secret, but it's an amazing opportunity to actually go down again into somewhere that's taken away from the street. It has the incredible architecture of that reservoir, those beautiful arches, and the sense of holding a very tranquil space where nature has actually colonised the city. 

[Bands of vegetation run down the facade of a high-rise building. Text: "One Central Park, Vertical Gardens, Broadway, Sydney. Lead designer: Patrick Blanc." 
The broad vertical gardens contain swathes of different plants. More plants grow in balcony planter boxes and on trellises running between balconies. Escalators are flanked by bands of vegetation.]

00:16:51:15 SUE BARNSLEY: And obviously Central Park is a new iteration of that. I guess we're really testing how effective green walls can be in managing climate change, in a way. The heat generation off built form. And all of these are real test cases of how urban life can actually evolve over the next decade. 

[Trees with different coloured foliage grow on the bank of a lake full of lily pads. Tony Maxwell moves past mature trees. Leafy stems, flowers and vines hang from thick branches. Robyn peers at a black snake curled in a crevice in a rock wall.]

00:17:26:20 TONY MAXWELL: I think it's personal, but I love getting out in the morning or any time of the day. And somehow this thing always strikes you with some sort of wonder. You know, there's a red-bellied black snake that lives in there and I want to see that every morning. And I go out to see it every morning and I just get a great sense of pleasure from it. 

00:17:44:14 SUE BARNSLEY: For me, gardens are a link between the wild and the civilised, and it's a way of, um... I think there's a freedom that comes with a garden. 

00:17:56:01 CHRISTINA KENNEDY: It's this feeling of peacefulness that you can get in a garden that is what, ultimately, I think we're looking for. 

00:18:06:18 TONY MAXWELL: It's a very powerful connection and it feels alive. 

[Ferns and flowers cluster on the broad branches of a large tree. 
Credits: Thanks to participants - Sue Barnsley, Craig Burton, Michael Cooke, Robyn Godlee, Clayton Holmes, Christina Kennedy, Tony Maxwell, Harry Moult, Carolyn Robinson. 
Survey Coordinator and Exhibition Consultant - Howard Tanner. 
Film Production - Afterglow. 
On a white screen, the black logo for the State Library New South Wales is formed of stylised exclamation and question marks. Copyright 2016.]