About
An assymetrical Victorian cottage designed and built at Ballarat by T. Turton for Michael Taffe 1900-1901. The garden was Champion cottage garden for Ballarat 1915 -1918 and has won many horticultural awards. Since being opened to the public as a heritage property many more awards have been added to those from the late nineteenth century and since being first opened by the City of Ballaarat in 1917. The cottage retains many of its original features and fittings including wall and ceiling papers, and furnishings as well as books and domestic items from each generation.
Our collection
Hymettus Cottage and Garden Collection (1983)
A family home held by the one family since the nineteenth century, originally built 1868 and largely rebuilt in 1900. The home contains a collection acquired mostly by descent. Most domestic items dating from the mid-nineteenth century but with a private library collection dating from the sixteenth century and includes a Horticultural Library and associated ephemera from the nineteenth to the twenty-first centuries. Books, documents and manuscript items relate to Ballarat historical events, the Eureka Stockade, 1956 Olympic rowing, family railway material, horticultural books and records, entertainment and sports in the region and the family's connections across community activities over the past 150 years. The book collection offers a rare insight into the development of the English language and also the story of writing and printing. The garden was Champion Cottage Garden City of Ballaarat 1915 - 1918 and is arguably the only 19th and early 20th century workingman's exhibition garden in Australia surviving in its original form. In 1988 the Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne researched and drew up plans for the garden's restoration.
Themes: Building community life, Building towns, cities and the garden state, Shaping cultural and creative life
