Sunday's Garden

Book excerpt: When Sunday and John Reed purchased Heide, now the site of Heide Museum of Modern Art, it was a neglected former dairy farm. At the end of their lives, it was unique among Melbourne's parklands, densely forested with exotic and native flora, with a stunningly beautiful cottage-style kitchen garden the jewel in its crownandmdash;in all, an extraordinary aesthetic accomplishment, the result of fifty years of vision, dedication and sheer hard work. The Reeds moulded Heide into a personal Eden, connecting art with nature and creating a nourishing environment for the artists they championedandmdash;Sidney Nolan, Albert Tucker, Joy Hester, Charles Blackman and Mirka Mora among them. Sunday's Garden explores the growing of Heide, and in doing so fully restores the Heide garden into the literature surrounding this inspiring site, its creators and the makers of its myths.