Another Winning Mansfield Garden

20 October 2009  

On Tuesday 20^th October Naomi and Jim Aldous from Mansfield was awarded Goulburn Valley Water’s 2009 Waterwise Garden Award for Best New Small Garden at the Goulburn Broken National Water Week Award Night held in Shepparton.

Goulburn Valley Water’s Public Relations Officer, Mary Connelly-Gale said that this is second time that a residential property in Mansfield has won this award.  “Last Year Ruth Lermond also from Mansfield won this category.” 

“When our Judge, Michelle Banfield from Flourish Landscaping and I first arrived at the Aldous’ we thought wow this garden is everything you are looking for in a waterwise garden,” said Ms Connelly-Gale.  “You knew instantly that this couple enjoyed gardening and knew a lot about waterwise gardening.”

Ms Connelly-Gale said that the Aldous’ have put a lot of time and effort into creating this garden.  “Naomi has designed the garden herself and Jim did a lot of the manual work in creating Naomi’s vision.”

“When designing the garden Naomi considered the various micro climates within their property and selected native and exotic plants to suite the position and being in Mansfield she also had to consider the frost tolerance of the plants,” said Ms Connelly-Gale.

The garden has a variety of frost and drought tolerant plants suitable for the Mansfield climate.  The plants include sedums, myoporum, helichrysum, rosemary, stachys, geranium, anisodontea etc and some and hardy shrubs such as exochorda, lophomyrtus, tea tree, a range of grasses and a number of other plants including many natives.

“Our judge described the Aldous’ garden as a wonderful blend of native and exotic plants,” said Ms Connelly-Gale “The many waterwise gardening principles, such as good heavy mulch, nice ground covering plants and low water use plants, the health of the plants and no lawn all contributed to Naomi and Jim being selected as the winner of the Small New Garden Award.”

Ms Connelly-Gale said that nominations were received from across the Corporation’s region. “The runner-up for this award was Helen Freer from Shepparton.  This category was also the most difficult to select and we awarded a highly commended to Jeff and Tracey Watt also of Shepparton.” 

The other category winners were

Best Professional Landscape Garden Winner - Ian and Jenny Wadelton – Kyabram,

Best Established Large Garden Winner - Eileen Ross from Kialla Lakes,

Best New Large Garden Winner - Polly Johnstone from Mooroopna and the runner  Robin Harwood & Lynne Manktelow of Cobram

Best Established Small Garden Winner Ron and Sandra Lee from Euroa and the runner up Catherine Bleasedale from Kyabram.”

Authorised By P.A. Quinn, 104-110 Fryers Street Shepparton