“Springdale”, 1313 Ulan Rd, Budgee Budgee.
Author: Jane Munro.
.History speaks to the future in a tranquil haven
Springdale, on Ulan Road, has a rich history, and the current owners have enhanced and sympathetically added to the original historic house and garden, to create a welcoming home and peaceful country haven, which speak of their great affection and devotion to the property.
Three very large white cedars, laden in springtime with the fragrant, lilac-coloured blossoms, stand at the entrance to the new section of the house. Their canopy dapples the sunlight on the lawn and adjacent verandah, which is edged by neat box hedging, enclosing a pair of Japanese maples with vivid, burgundy-coloured foliage, flanked by standard white iceberg roses. Underplantings in circular dry-stone beds below the cedars are full of flowers and foliage, notably windflowers, roses, acanthus, delightful lemon and white aquilegias and white foxgloves, with seaside daisies and dichondra spilling over the edge.
Adjacent to the house there’s a neat, compact kitchen garden with herbs and vegetables in containers, and a trellis of fragrant pink sweet peas.
Further from the house, garden beds give way to featured trees, with more box hedges containing shrubs and annuals. Occasional sculptures and vintage items evoking the property’s history- a lawn roller, a burnished milk can, an old, rusty decorative garden gate- form points of interest.
There’s a pretty group of young silver birches, and a sturdy old iron farm gate, opening onto an avenue of cypresses.
A nostalgic atmosphere hangs in the air near some disused stables. Here, grape trellises from a small, long-gone, home vineyard, are now graced with climbing pink roses, calling to mind previous owners’ hopes and dreams. A grand old pepper tree complements the rural vista to the east.
As the lawn gives way to paddock grasses and eucalypts, raked windrows of leafy fallen gum tree branches have been used to establish bed boundaries in a newly established native garden- the soft hues of grey and russet brown pleasantly harmonious with the surrounding bushland trees and shrubs.