Open Garden Story 2021

 

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 19^th 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Ian has a garden Blog which has had over 350,000 visits and has been archived by the state library also a web page ‘Garden Product Reviews’, a Facebook page ‘The Giving Garden’ with 3200 likes and another Facebook page ‘Open Gardens and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.