The Chronicle Exhibition Gardens are open to the public throughout the Toowoomba Carnival of Flowers week in September each year. The Martin Garden will be celebrating its 20th consecutive year as an Exhibition Garden in 2014. Admission to the Exhibition Gardens is by ticket only, with all proceeds donated to charity. The large front garden has been constructed around a circular driveway with a ce
ntral, lawned bed where a magnolia grandiflora and a cercis Canadensis will eventually grow to dominance. Following an easy walking clockwise route around the house, visitors will pass a standardised bougainvillea to a grouping of trees which include two elms (golden and variegated), a variegated liriodendron, also known as the tulip tree, which bears small orange flowers, clivias and hellebores. A bed against the west side of the house features an arbutus, the Irish strawberry tree, a large autumn-flowering shrub surrounded by ferns. In the back garden a beautiful expanse of lawn, made lush by a bore-fed irrigation system, is surrounded by garden beds, shrubs and trees, birch, standard pink carpet roses and an acanonthera. In front of them is an ornamental bridge and gazebo, amid landscaped beds, and a weeping apricot, crab apples, tree ferns and a small formal pond with water plants. A sandstone pathway leads you through a cherry walk and past a dry rock wall. A garden swing house provides a relaxing spot from which to view water bird feature framed by a lattice walk thru lined by perennial beds. On the eastern side of the house beds feature the orange flowered tulip tree, a pear tree, sasanqua and japonica camellias, a crab apple, a jacaranda, a standardised wisteria, a ginkgo a cedar, an atlantica glauca and a gordonia. The St Matthews Ladies Guild provide Devonshire Tea's at the Garden throughout the Carnival of Flowers - a wonderful break before or after a walk around the garden. Plants, craft and home-baked goods are also for sale with all proceeds going to charity. The Martin Exhibition Garden is a large garden and is quite flat so suitable for wheelchairs. This is a private home and is ONLY open to the public during the Carnival of Flowers.
