Land Use by European Settlers

In the 1840s and 1850s there were grand plans for the Heidelberg District to become the fruit and vegetable hub for Melbourne. Large estates were divided into smaller tenant farms. Fruit trees and market gardens abounded along the Yarra River contours. Farm labourers lived in cottages in Heidelberg, and the village blacksmith was an integral part of an agriculture-focused community.

All this came to a sudden halt with a string of four disastrous floods in 1863 and 1864. The land along the river flats was turned over to cattle and dairy industries instead. Paddocks were replaced by hay crops, and the market gardens in the sandbelt suburbs and Werribee became more prominent than Heidelberg.

Planting in Heidelberg took a different direction including nursery planting, domestic planting, Chinese market gardens, commemorative and civic planting, rehabilitation planting and more recently, community planting.

This exhibition celebrates these different types of planting in the Heidelberg District from the 1840s through to today. We have displays of historical photographs, objects relevant to farming in the Heidelberg district, documents, maps and many other illustrations.