Orion Sculpture Park and Gardens

Open to the public Oct/Nov 2011

Five years ago Stephanie Burns and Stephen Hooper came to a turning point in their lives. They sat together to put forward their secret desires. Stephanie wanted to build a sculpture park, no real surprises there, and Stephen had always harboured a desire to plant a native garden. “Great,” said Stephanie, “both dreams will meld perfectly”, and so Orion Sculpture Park was born.

Stephanie and Stephen 2006 just prior to purchase		View from the gate 2006

The idea of making garden rooms for the sculptures was inspired by the Tuileries Gardens in Paris where the city’s Maillol sculptures are placed in designated garden rooms in front of the Louvre. Stephanie lived in Pairs for four months in 1999 just prior to her move to Canberra and found the garden’s arrangement of the individual sculptures to be very effective and original.

Dido forms the centrepiece of the herb garden		The bronze sculpture of Peter Fuller on the terrace below

The name ‘Orion Sculpture Park and Gardens’ came about one night with friends surrounding a winter camp fire on the property. While musing as a group over a possible name they got side tracked by a discussion of the visible constellations – with the Orion nebula resplendent in the night’s sky overhead. It was then that they literally thought the name was heaven sent – to get to the property you have to come up Orion Street, along Cooks Hill Road, down Archer Close to the property that we live on under the Orion nebula.

View of park under the tree in the first photo above		Mundane Egg, Bronze

Even before buying the property they had began to prepare for planting the native trees and shrubs by collecting seed and cuttings from their Yarralumla neighbours on evening walks. From the start, they made a detailed plan of the general layout of the park, designating separate areas for native gardens for Stephen to design and exotics gardens for Stephanie to design. In addition, a large area was set aside for an orchard and veggie patch.

The original plan of the park drawn up in 2006 designating paths, house, studio, native and exotic areas and sculpture rooms.		Origin of the World, Bronze

The property had five established trees on what was originally a sheep paddock; the eucalypts are all gradually coming back to a beautiful lushness after years of drought coupled with the compaction of the soil by grazing. The Gum tree that suffered the most forms a great nesting habitat for birds. The ponds have encouraged more birds to nest in the nearby trees as they provide food and water, and encouraged indigenous frogs to recolonise the land. The frog's calls can be quite deafening the night before rain. A pair of native ducks has adopted the largest pond.

The first series of ponds		Peron's Tree frog

Seed raising is a regular activity of Stephen’s as he propagates many of the natives from seeds as well as cuttings. The Banksias have been particularly successful since he started burning the seed pods on the barbeque to extract the seeds. One thousand native trees and shrubs have been planted over the last four years, many of them propagated by Stephen.

Many of the bushes on the native sculpture walk have been propogated by Stephen		Orpheo, Bronze

 
The vegetable patch has grown to 30 x 6 m over the years in their quest for self sufficiency; with preserving and freezing providing the means for year round produce. Stephen recently built a chicken coup in the veggie patch for their two Wyandotte chickens, the girls are allowed to roam the patch for an hour a day keeping down the weeds on the paths and eating the unwanted bugs.

Veggie patch 2010		Unofficial Rose; For St Christopher, Bronze

Stephen has recently begun making bases for the nearly thirty sculptures that live permanently outdoors. Others are added from inside the house for the Open Day as the bronze doesn’t always retain the brightness of the special colour effects of Stephanie’s sculptures if exposed to the elements. Sculptures of family members, giant flowers, animals and fish populate the most established native area. An avenue of Manchurian pear trees leads to a cypress circle, a bronze bust of Stephanie’s step-daughter, Sylvie, stands in the centre of the circle in a pink cement font surrounded by a circular bed of succulents. Most of the large bronze sculptures were cast in Sydney in 2000 at three different foundries using different techniques and casting processes. The whole process took many months of work before the sculptures were ready for their debut at Floriade that year.

Sylvie, Bronze, Stainless steel and cement fondu		Seating area by the ponds

From the cypress circle one can walk down the nut avenue planted two years ago with walnuts, almonds and three types of sweet chestnuts, towards the Fish carved from Silky Oak from a tree that Stephanie had cut down in Sydney twelve years ago. Other pieces from the same tree form seats by the ponds up at the studio; resting places to sit and listen to the frogs and the birds that make the oldest River Red Gum their home.

Eastern Bearded Dragon		Fish, Silky Oak

Details

Orion Sculpture Park, Yass

EXTRAS        Open studio with Stephanie's paintings.
ADDRESS     17 Archer Close, Yass.
DIRECTIONS            Entering Yass from Canberra, take main street over river & turn right into Orion St, left into Waterworks Rd, left into Archer Close.
AUSTRALIAN OPEN GARDEN SCHEME   29-30 Oct 2011. 10am-4.30pm. $6.00.
CLASSIC YASS, YASS ARTS TRAIL 5 – 6 Nov 2011. 10am-4.30pm. $6.00.