Acacia cognata – Canberra's Green Spaces

The Palace Theatre, in New Acton is our favourite place to go the movies in Canberra..

New Acton is a precinct in the city that has apartment blocks, a hotel, restaurants, bars, cafe, a cinema and an art gallery all fitted around the historic former Hotel Acton.

The movie theatre is in the Nishi building, which won the International Project of the Year in 2015 Building Awards.

The building is multi-purpose with apartments, offices and a hotel and restaurants. The apartments have an energy rating of 8 stars with the use of solar power..

In between these old and new buildings are a range of gardens, designed by landscape architects Oculus.

A dwarf Eucalyptus leucoxylon, (possibly) soft grey westringia, and New Zealand flax.

Westringia and the weeping wattles (Acacia cognata) and a Japanese Maple.

On a quiet autumn morning this soft green garden is a best kept secret. Nearby office workers come for coffee, others come for tea and cake, a pizza for lunch or just a snack before the movies.

Car free zones are always welcome in the city. These spaces are sometimes used for social events and markets..

Apartments are looking over community gardens and sculptures..

A very cute little bookshop beneath a rather scary sculpture..

and back to the Nishi building where we go to the movies…this is the striking hotel entrance and staircase.

the window looks out onto the gardens…both the stairs and the window are favourite subjects for Instagrammers from Canberra.

and as we leave the movies we pass two street paintings done by the nearby University students ..

When in Canberra you are never very far away from Cockatoos, and there are plenty of real ones in the nearby University grounds..

Landscape Australia article on New Acton says: ”We believe in the power of architecture to improve our lives.”

New Acton has the friendly charm and a village feel to it, and I think it is absolutely right that architecture can improve our lives…..do you?

I hope you are enjoying your home town where ever you are in the world, and that you have some green spaces around you.

Peter and Lyn have created a water wise, bush-style garden within 40 minutes of the city centre of Canberra. It has been a work in progress since 1981, and shows incredible dedication and talent.

As they had chosen to live out of town, Peter and Lyn wanted the garden to blend in with the surrounding bushland.

All the dry stone retaining walls are made of excavated rock from the house site. Peter has constructed and built the walls, steps and structures…in fact….everything!

The copper sculptures in the garden are designed by Annie Storey, and the corrugated water tanks and sandstone set them off well. Lovely to see the yellow flowering Acacia cognata spreading across the rocks.

There are some camellias, and other exotics tucked away in the front garden, but we are here in early December, when the real heat starts, so we are looking at the predominantly native parts of the garden. Beyond the water features, Peter has used more corrugated iron and sandstone as borders for garden beds.

There is a dry creek bed….and grass tree

kangaroo paw, golden correa, forbs, grasses, mountain devil and other local indigenous plants.

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Along the side walk are Waratahs, a flannel flower and Banksias.

The kangaroo paws used to be in pots but are now doing well in the garden.

Peter said he has a particular love for banksias and has many varieties behind the house. ”I like native plants as they flower for a much longer period of time and they attract so many birds.”

The vegetable garden and orchard have become Lyn’s domain since she retired. The orchard provides them with lemons, nectarines, mandarins, cherries, pears, and the surrounding bushes are raspberries and blueberries and grapes.

(Lyn said some parts of the orchard are to be replaced, as the trees are too close together.)

Here are the vegetable beds with strawberries, peas, beans, capsicum, eggplants, herbs, cucumber, corn and carrots and asparagus…all on four bed rotation.

Now that is organisation for you!

The potato bed has been designed to allow Lyn to open part of the fencing and harvest potatoes without disturbing the plant.

There is a bed for rockmelons, pumpkins and zucchinis at the bottom of the dry stone retaining wall.

As we walk around the garden and back to the car, we see this glorious Grevillea with flowers like candles shining in the sun….

and a Bottle Brush bursting with red flowers…………

and it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

Thanks to Lyn and Peter for sharing this wonderful bush setting which is their home and garden.

This garden was part of Open Gardens Canberra

Tag: Acacia cognata

Canberra’s New Acton: green spaces in the city..

Beyond the city, the bush garden calls….