Hidden amid stone-flecked hills, 30 kilometres west of Ballarat, is a castle that looks as though it’s been plucked straight from a Scottish fairytale. When Christine and John Dever bought it in 1999, Ercildoune comprised a decaying 10-bedroom mansion, weed-choked grounds and 80 hectares of forgotten farmland.

“We knew it was historically significant, so we thought we’d have a look at the auction,” says Christine of the mansion built in 1838. “Ercildoune was crying out to be brought back to life.”

A decade on, the property has been restored to one of the country’s finest examples of a 19th-century pastoral estate. Driving into Ercildoune along an avenue of century-old Himalayan cedars and Monterey pines, the clock turns back to the days of gold, grain and grazing.

Ercildoune’s centrepiece is a two-storey granite mansion surrounded by six hectares of formal grounds studded with grand trees. Towering Californian redwoods, golden elms, giant bunya bunya pines, Scotch firs and Lombardy poplars form a breathtaking backdrop to the gardens, which include sweeping lawns, huge garden beds, wooded dells, fruit trees and an inner walled garden that was built in the 1870s and filled with roses.

Amazingly, this wondrous place was established by two teenagers: Scottish brothers Thomas and Somerville Learmonth were only 19 and 18, respectively, when their father sent them to Victoria in 1837 to establish a sheep run in the unexplored bush. As it turned out, part of the land they acquired would become the Ballarat Goldfields.

The Learmonth brothers built the mansion using granite hewn from nearby Mt Ercildoune. They shaped the park-like grounds by putting in garden beds, orchards, vegetable plots and lakes. Many of the trees that stand tall today were shipped in from Scotland. The brothers sold Ercildoune in 1873 and the property flourished well into the next century, even as it changed hands. In the ’60s it began to fall into disrepair: for decades its gardens grew wild, bales of hay were stored in the mansion, sheep wandered through stately rooms and possums infested the gabled roof.

It was in this derelict state that the Devers bought Ercildoune.

“We looked around and wondered what we’d done,” Christine says of their first day as the owners. “The idea of restoring it was overwhelming.”

But they did, devoting the next four years to faithful heritage restoration. For inspiration, the Devers researched the history of the estate. Photos from the 1860s show cultivated garden beds, clipped hedges, a formal box parterre, a curved conservatory and an intricate network of pathways. With the help of groundsman Robin Hill and horticulturist Neil Paterson, they tamed the garden of overgrown hedges, a tangle of boxwood, bay trees, lemonwood and osage orange. Further afield, they battled rampaging thistles, capeweed and blackberries, and cleared mountains of silt from the lakes.

“We have been as true to the original plantings as possible,” says Christine, who studied horticulture at Melbourne’s Burnley College. “Owners of heritage properties have been called ‘caretakers of history’ so we feel a huge responsibility in caring for Ercildoune.”
 
A feeling of romantic abandonment sweeps through this country estate, with its randomly placed perennials and exuberant beds of roses.

At the entry to the walled garden, an 1870s wrought-iron gate is draped with porcelain berry (Ampelopsis brevipedunculate). Inside, the north wall features a profusion of white oak-leaf hydrangea, Rhododendron ‘Dame Nellie Melba’, and the long-flowering lilac Fuchsia arborescens. The south wall boasts lavish groupings of blue-flowering delphiniums.

Throughout the grounds, Christine has planted dozens of perennials, many with a blue bent. Periwinkle (Vinca major) helps keep weeds at bay, although Christine warns that this prolific plant is better suited to large gardens. Vivid red camellias and colossal old rhododendrons stand out amid glades of shady woodlands, which are underplanted with masses of bulbs, including daffodils, irises, daylilies and arum lilies. Two orchards produce abundant fruit – nashi pears, apples, peaches, plums and pomegranates. Thirty espaliered trees surround the walled garden: cherry, almond and apricot, as well as a century-old fig.

The gardens are irrigated from an underground aquifer, but five years of drought has meant the water supply has dwindled: last year the Devers sank a bore as an insurance against running out of water.

“An old well, stone walls and homestead form Ercildoune’s framework, and the trees and plants are its living treasures,” says Christine. “The garden is always changing. That’s the beauty of Ercildoune.”