use of stone and whitewashed walls, louvred shutters, the colonnaded facade of the garage, the summer house, the brass door step and the general utility of the house and garden. In seeking out and drawing the buildings for his "Old Colonial Architecture in New South Wales and Tasmania", Hardy Wilson became aware of the siting and gardens of early colonial houses. He was the first to recognise and appreciate a characteristic mid-19th century style of gardening in New South Wales. For nearly 50 years his was the only voice stressing its importance and his descriptions - as vivid and full blown as the late summer gardens he visited - are still the most evocative. Wilson looked at these gardens with a painter's eye, not the analytical eye of a designer. He was neither botanist not horticulturist. He appreciated their siting, colour and texture rather than their layout and details. Of large forest trees he admired only the picturesque angophora (A.floribunda or A.subvelutina), the "apple oak" of the colonists; and, presumably the turpentines (Syncarpia glomulifera) which he planted along the rear boundaries of Purulia. He designed 5 gardens: Eryldene (Gordon), Purulia, Macquarie Cottage (Pymble), a garden for "An Ideal Australian Home" and for a "Standard Cottage" for the William Moore Trust at Gordon. The latter were not carried out. Purulia and Macquarie Cottage have been altered. Eryldene presents a problem as in its final form it displays so much the taste and horticultural expertise of its owner, Professor Waterhouse, that Wilson's contribution is difficult to assess, and since it predates the other gardens, the influence of "Professor Pymble" on these should be considered. The similarities between all Wilson's garden plans are marked. From his love and knowledge of colonial gardens came his choice of plants. The range is limited, but it contrasts with the ubiquitous palms, brush box and hybrid roses of contemporary gardens as stringkingly as his unbroken colour-washed walls contrasted with the redness of his neighbours' "multangular villas". Wilson wrote: Wilson planned his gardens with layouts of an easy, but nevertheless rigorously applied formal geometry, which owes little to colonial or contemporary English garden design (to which Wilson makes no reference in any of his writings). They are unmistakably gardens designed by an architect who, though admiring the architectural work of Lutyens, probably knew little of current English gardens. This geometry ... reached its extreme in his own house,