When Dale Frank is not painting in his studio, he has painstakingly created a botanical garden over 50 acres of his Hunter Valley property.
An otherworldly landscape of towering cactus and palms has appeared on the outskirts of Singleton. It has no paths, just wide, grassy avenues leading in every direction. “I want people to meander – it’s about discovering new things,” says the garden’s creator, artist Dale Frank. “The last thing I want is jasmine and rose beds.”
Artist Dale Frank at Hambledon Hill, where has spent the last decade creating a botanical garden over 50 acres.It is an extraordinary folly and feat of the artist’s imagination and rigour. “I look at the garden as if I’m looking at a painting, where the large trees become the initial marks and the painting is structured – it’s not naturally wild,” he says. “The same practice that I have in the studio takes over, and it’s just finding the most beautiful combination that works.
He is part of Australia’s artistic firmament: In 2014, he donated 85 works, then valued at $4 million, to the National Gallery of Australia, while his paintings are in overseas collections such as the Guggenheim in New York. To satisfy his “aesthetic infatuation” Frank hunts for mature specimens – the rarer the better – rescued from the developer’s wrecking ball. There are hillii figs and Moreton Bays that had outlived their usefulness to the state government after the 2000 Olympics, and North African date palms that were growing wild in a Brisbane paddock. An enormous Queensland bottle tree came from a home in Parramatta being demolished to make way for an apartment block.
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