A-maze-ing space

A garden can be a lot of things in our lives: a place to work, somewhere to get creative and, of course, a place to connect with nature. But one of the most underrated elements in any garden project is fun! In a small town in central Victoria, between Ballarat and Daylesford, is the playful garden of Trish Kevin and Chris Dennis with a fabulous foliage feature – a home-grown hedge maze. Snaking its way around a 2000m² area, the maze is equal parts enticing and impressive, inviting visitors young and old to enter, explore and, hopefully, lose themselves a little.

Just looking at the waves of green is respite enough but, with the hedge comprising literally hundreds of plants, it is also cooling: areas deep within this puzzle of plants can be up to 3°C cooler than the surrounds. With glimpses of blue sky and distant voices drifting through the branches, exploring this playful patch is absolutely magical. 

The entire property covers about 2ha and also features indigenous plantings, flowers for picking and vast productive gardens but at its heart is the hedge. When Trish and Chris purchased the block in 1993 there was nothing on it apart from a row of pine trees. “We bought a little strip of bare land from the church next door to do it,” Trish says. 

The couple knew exactly what they wanted to do with the property, planting the maze before they even built a house. “We had always talked about growing a maze, so we started on that first,” Trish says. She had horticultural experience, having worked professionally in land care and forestry. “I just wanted it [the hedge] to grow quickly, I looked at some native plant options, but the Cupressocyparis ‘Leighton Green’ were available in the quantity we needed, so that is what we used.”

While they waited for the tubestock to become available, Chris set to work mapping out his design for the maze, using an unexpected design tool: “I bought a big box of Cuisenaire blocks from the op shop,” he says. “I set them out on graph paper and moved them around for a couple of weeks, trying lots of original designs. Trish only gave me a couple of weeks as she was keen to have it planted before the winter rain.” Chris hadn’t quite finished the design when he and Trish drove to a nursery in the Dandenong Ranges to pick up 500 tubes. “I was still making changes as we planted the tubes.’

Chris kept the maze dimensions simple: “Everything was based on measurements of one metre: the path width, the spacing between trees, everything. I didn’t know how fast or big it would really grow.” At the core of the maze is a small theatre for performances and poetry readings. “We put an exit in the centre of the maze to give people direct access to the theatre and also an emergency exit for people wanting to get out halfway through the maze. I wanted to make sure it was a challenge, but that there was an easy way out!

For nearly 25 years, the couple tended their maze almost in secret. ‘‘Our friends and family gave us such a hard time: ‘What are you doing with that in your backyard and nobody using it?’’’ Trish recalls. ‘‘So eventually we decided we had to get it open to the public. We had always been collectors and had so much stuff in storage. When we looked at it, we had the makings of a stack of carnival games, so we started to put it together.’’ 

The maze, carnival garden and onsite cafe are open to the public on weekends and school holidays. With joyful interventions and handmade games scattered throughout, every turn is fun. But the hedge is where the heart is. “It’s our baby!’’ Trish says. ‘’If a part gets damaged, we prune straight away, as a preventative for canker [a fungal disease that can enter through damaged stems and wreak havoc on a hedge]. It takes so much work to maintain it and keep it growing. The key is keeping it healthy.’’

How do you keep a hedge healthy? “Pruning, pruning, and of course, pruning!” Trish says. Before planting the hedge, Chris had never really pruned anything. He is now a master, spending six weeks every year tending the hedge. “It’s 700 metres long but I have to prune both sides and the top, so for me it is more like two kilometres! I think I’ve spent about three years of my life in here [pruning]. You have to do it hard. If you miss a year of pruning you end up losing all the space to move through.”

Reaching the top of the hedge is a challenge, given it now stands about 3m high, but pruning it is critical to hedge health. It encourages branching below and also ensures the upper growth doesn’t shade out the lower surfaces. The hedge is also pruned at a slight angle, as removing more from the upper reaches allows light to reach the lower sections (a great tip for hedging at home). “Light is absolutely the most important thing to ensure strong growth. It’s particularly important on the shaded sides,” Chris says. 

Beyond the maze, there’s an indigenous plant patch, vast vegetable sections and an orchard – a testament to the couple’s diverse interests and love of gardening. “We are a country garden, so it has to be useful and productive,” Trish says. The orchard is filled with a variety of deciduous fruit trees, including some apple trees that are also pruned to perfection. “I find training them as espaliers is so much more productive for less work. You just need to do a small prune once or twice a year, compared to the full-sized apples, which need so much wood removed.”

For the local community, this garden is such a generous offering: welcoming, creative and playful, and a beautiful reflection of its creators. It is clearly a labour of love, but Trish and Chris say their years of hard work is rewarded in spades. “Watching someone who’s a bit grumpy and has been dragged along, completely transform and have fun [in the garden] – it’s always a joy,” Trish says. “Anyone who grows a garden from scratch understands the joy you get from it, and I really love seeing the plants themselves taking over: you might design the space, but the plants tend to take control in the end!” Learn more at mazehouse.com.au

Story written by Millie Ross
Photography by Simon Griffiths