The
Giving Garden
Ian and
Judy Wintle are going to open their beautiful one-acre Birkdale Garden on the
weekend of 20 and 21 November 2021 for the 19th time,
it would have been twenty but Covid restrictions prevented that last year.
The garden
is probably the only garden in Australia where the shade canopy is provided by
more than 50 tropical fruit and nut trees, there are Sapotes, Lychees,
Sapodillas, Mango’s, Custard Apples, Carambolas, just to name a few.
The garden
has meandering pathways throughout and as you walk through you must look left,
right and above to see and appreciate the vast array of plants growing.
There are
shade houses full of Bromeliads, Orchids, Aroids and other rare and exotic
plants, not forgetting a collection of over 60 different Amorphophallus.
Ian and
Judy have been collecting for 30 years so you will get to see some very rare
botanicals.
Their
garden has been described as ‘Birkdale’s ‘Botanical Garden’.
A must see
is the mass planting of Caladiums.
There will
be a large range of plants for sale as well as ‘Chocolate Pudding’ fruit and a
coffee van will be serving refreshments on the front lawn.
A toilet
portable will be available.
Will be
having a Covid check in app at the gate and numbers will be restricted to
health regulation orders, which at the moment is 100.
All gate
takings go to assist our son compete in the ‘World Disabled Water Ski
Championships’ which are held every two years.
In 1996 our
son has a motor bike accident and became a paraplegic, as well as him needing
rehabilitation Mum and Dad also needed rehabilitation and gardening fitted the
bill, we needed to keep active and not to dwell on what happened to our son.
Gardening
has now become a passion and we have visited over 200 garden clubs to give
presentations and hosted many bus tours in the garden, not to mention the
friends we have made on our journey.
Ian and
Judy were Redland City’s ‘Local Hero’s’ in 2017 having raised over $60,000
for the Lion’s Club.
We both
work hard in the garden and our doctor’s say “keep on doing that” forget about
the aches and pains.
Judy does
all the potting and propagation and Ian the garden and maintenance, we jokingly
say we have a happy marriage (53 years) as of a morning we each go our own way
in the garden and see each other for morning tea and lunch.
Ian has a
garden Blog which has had over 350,000 visits and has been archived by
the state library also a web page ‘Garden Product Reviews’, a Facebook page
‘The Giving Garden’ with 3200 likes and another Facebook page ‘Open
Gardens and Events Queensland’ with 3400 likes.
While
gardening keeps my body healthy and fit, I also need to keep my mind active and
doing the blog and Facebook pages does that.
So please
come and visit even if you have been previously as there is always lots of new
things to see in the garden as every year, we improve the garden, this year has
been no exception.
