Temperance House
Castlemaine
A kitchen and herb garden cut into the asphalt guest carpark behind Temperance House, a heritage hotel built in 1855 in the gold mining town of Castlemaine, now a small guesthouse run by Sally Roxon and Christian Gattermayr, who wanted a productive garden that would also soften and cool the hot brick courtyard. The vegetable beds are round concrete pipe rings, craned in and filled, and around the edge runs a mediterranean planting chosen for Castlemaine's tough climate and for the way it sits against the old brick walls, with olive trees, grasses and an existing elderflower kept in the mix.
The rings were filled with fig trees, tomatoes, lettuce and zucchini, rain off the roof is tanked for the garden, and the bed in the picture runs blue chalk sticks and giant feather grass through the perennials. Tim Pilgrim Gardens publishes the job as Temperance House; the designer's own post shows the garden four months after planting, with the build's winter progress shots behind it.
Tim Pilgrim Gardens
Tim Pilgrim Gardens is a small garden design practice in Central Victoria led by Tim Pilgrim, known for naturalistic cottage style gardens that blend the traditional and the modern, the edible and the ornamental. Pilgrim trained in horticulture and worked at the Diggers Club's Garden of St Erth and with Paul Bangay before starting his own practice.
Tim Pilgrim Gardens (@t.p_gardens). Photography @simong9. Garden at @temperancehousecastlemaine.
The picture comes from this post on Instagram.
Researched August 2026. I credit each piece as carefully as I can; if you know more about this one, message me on Instagram.