My lovely neighbour and my clever, arty, gardening friend and I first set off to visit Banool, which was on display, for the first time, as a part of the open garden scheme. ‘Banool’ is a Paul Bangay designed garden filled with lovely old trees and interesting sculptural pieces

‘Banool’ has a lovely, old, stone house, which was built in 1936. The property was bought, by the current owners, in 2004 and the house and gardens have been extensively renovated.

There are many interesting copper sculptural pieces including a number of handmade copper swings, which looked amazing as architectural pieces.

The day began with rain but ended up being quite pleasant, though the seats were a little wet for our Devonshire tea tasting by the pool.

My trusty neighbour appears to be enjoying the scones! She didn’t continue on with us to the next garden/artist studio. Perhaps she went back for more scones…

We continued on to visit Nerina Lascelles. , one of the amazing artists who had her studio open as part of the Nillumbik Artist Open Studios
Nerina has been exhibiting in Australia and overseas for over 20 years. Her work is quite layered and seems to have a Japanese influence. I find it very beautiful.

The house was an incredible backdrop for Nerina’s exquisite paintings.

Our next stop was Shaaron Smith’s Mosaics Studio

This was the original purpose of our trip and we found Shaaron warm and friendly and her garden a riot of mosaics and roses.

Shaaron also runs classes in mosaics so if you are interested make sure you contact her. Click on the link above for her details.

Whilst we were admiring Shaaron’s mosaics, we met a couple who suggested another studio they thought we should visit. So we jumped back into our cars and bounced our way along a long and winding road and dusty tracks to find the oasis of Kay Steventon

Kay has a studio with her pantings but it was her ceramic pieces which I fell in love with…

Her garden was beautiful too and we were encouraged to have a wander through..

And so it was with a heart filled with gardens and art and mosaics and scones and adventure and beauty that we headed home. A Perfect day really.