Nina Crone OAM (1934–2007) was an Australian gardening writer, broadcaster, teacher and school principal. From 1982 to 1997, under the nom de plume Alison Dalrymple, Nina wrote garden and plant history articles for The Age. She was editor of Australian Garden History from 2001 to 2006. Following her death, a fundraiser was held to establish a writing award in her memory. The Nina Crone Award for Australian Student Garden History Writing encouraged new writing by funding four recipients. Their writing has been published in Australian Garden History (AGH). See links to the journals below.
The AGHS wishes to continue this initiative and is calling for donors to support an ongoing Nina Crone Writing Fund. The intention of the fund is to attract new voices in the field of Australian garden history. Students and young writers will be particularly encouraged to participate, but others wishing to offer a fresh perspective on issues related to the history of gardens and landscape, and the challenges of environment and heritage may also be eligible for funding.
Potential donors are warmly invited to contact:
- the national office (info@gardenhistorysociety.org.au) or
- the journal Editor (editor@gardenhistorysociety.org.au).
Any amount may be donated. Donors will be publicly acknowledged in the journal when articles produced under the fund are published, unless they wish to remain anonymous. Donations made via the National Trust are tax deductible.
Accessing an award from the new fund
Writing may be invited by different means depending on circumstances:
- directly commissioned by the AGHS Editor on a specific theme.
- through advertised competitions targeted to:
- particular age groups (students)
- or to a particular cohort whose views are underrepresented in AGH (e.g. Northern Territorians)
Eligible topics and research
Articles must be on a topic related to Australian garden history and must not have been previously published or the research otherwise publicly presented. All associated research must be original and must have been completed within the last two years.
Nina Crone awardees
Digging up wisteria in the archives
Published in Australian Garden History, vol. 37 no. 4 April 2026
Erica Wright, an honours student at the University of Newcastle, was the 2025 Vera Deacon History intern on a project to digitise records about Cintra House in Maitland as part of The Treasures of Cintra House project, a partnership between the University of Newcastle, Maitland City Council and Catherine Blanch, the owner of Cintra. The Nina Crone award allowed Wright to draw a story about the garden from the record. In May 2026, Wright received the National Trust’s Young Achiever Award.
Retracing Country at New York Botanical Garden, Indigenous stories uncovered in the archive
Published in Australian Garden History, vol. 37 no. 4 April 2026
Dakota Feirer is a Bundjalung storyteller and cultural theorist. He has been working as research assistant to the Reconnecting to Country metadata enrichment project led by ENRICH Postdoctoral Fellow, Dr. Rose Barrowcliffe (Macquarie University).
Dakota Feirer at NYBG Herbarium (photo Ariel Martinez Ferrari, 2025)
Trees as monuments Napoleon’s willows, memory and empire
Published in Australian Garden History, vol. 37 no. 4 April 2026
Dr Ekaterina Heath and Dr Emma Gleadhill are historians who collaborated on a project that traced mentions of Napoleon’s willows in more than 400 Australian newspaper articles. They discuss how stories constructed around Napoleon’s willow trees in Australia reveal the shifting role of tree monuments.
Bringing the landscape in, Cootamundra gardens over the years
Published in Australian Garden History, vol. 36 no. 4 April 2025
Sherryn Datoo was mentored by the chair of the Editorial Advisory Committee, Anne Claoue-Long, to write this article about rural gardens and landscape.
Published in Australian Garden History, vol. 36 no. 3 January 2025
Dr Iliana Oakes is a graduate in Natural History Illustration at Newcastle University. She designed the cover of this issue. You can read her artist’s statement here.
Goodbye Ramsay St: Chasing the suburban dream in Vermont
Published in Australian Garden History, vol. 35 no. 4 April 2024
Emma Sheppard-Simms is a landscape architect and owner of Plantery Landscape Architecture, located on Wadawarrung Country (Ballarat). In 2023 Emma won a competition run by Open Gardens, with a prize of $10,000 to build and design a student garden at the Melbourne International Flower and Garden Show.
waranta tunapri tapiltimilaythina putiya pawa
Our knowledge travels through Country; it is never finished.
Published in Australian Garden History, vol. 34 no. 3 January 2023
This article by proud Palawa woman Trisha Hodge drew on her presentation at the AGHS Hobart conference in 2022 . It began the process of Hodge converting her database of Tasmanian plants into a book: the best seller, Palawa tunapri, published by Fullers (2025) and supported by the Kindred Spirits Fund.
A wild garden in remote Tasmania: In the footsteps of Labillardière
Published in Australilan Garden History, vol. 33 no. 4 April 2022
Deborah Wace’s art and fabric design is driven by her desire to educate about Tasmania’s biodiversity, rich environmental values, unique and threatened species, and its botanical history, advocating for Tasmania’s wild and endangered flora and the stories which accomny them.
Bearded Orchid (Photo Deborah Wace)
The Bundian Way: A shared Aboriginal and European history
Published in Australian Garden History, vol. 33 no. 1 July 2021
Warren Foster is a proud Yuin man from the Djiringanj tribe of Wallaga Lake in far south NSW. He has worked as a culture teacher and tour guide and is founder of the Gulaga Dancers, a traditional men’s dance group.
Fingers Orchid in Merambego, NSW (Photo Warren Foster)
Indigenous Garden Spaces for Education
Published in Australian Garden History, vol. 32 no. 3 January 2021
Poppy Fitzpatrick, freelance writer, photographer and film maker, explored how various garden initiatives in South Australian schools are giving First Nations children the opportunity to enrich their cultural identities within the broader curriculum and how these initiatives are helping the wider school communities to develop a deeper cultural and historical understanding of Aboriginal knowledge.
Her images were used on the front cover of the Australian Garden History, January 2021 issue.
Unearthing Women's Activism
Published in Australian Garden History, vol. 32 no. 2 October 2020
Renee Mickelburgh, a PhD candidate, University of Queensland asked ‘What happens when a woman moves out of her garden into a wilderness that is both physical and political?’ This question followed Renee as she turned from the past into the present to draw meaning from the contemporary online stories Australian women tell about their gardens. Renee’s article explored the friendship between Judith Wright and Kathleen McArthur, two garden lovers and environmental activists.
Letter from Judith Wright to Kathleen McArthur (Courtesy Fryer Library UQ)
Imagining Australianness: National identity and the bush garden movement
Published in Australian Garden History, vol. 32 no. 2 October 2020
Jasmine Rhodes is a Master of Environment candidate at the University of Melbourne. She has an academic background in horticulture and landscape management, and currently
specialises in environmental humanities, philosophy and education.
Native shrubs, trees and herbaceous species frame distant eucalypts in Burnley Gardens’ Australian garden, established in the mid-1980s. (Photo Jasmine Rhodes)
Expanding Horizons
Published in Australian Garden History, vol. 31 no. 3 January 2020
Zoë Heine was studying a Masters of Science at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand when she penned her reflections on the AGHS’s conference in October 2019 in Wellington, New Zealand.
‘Establissment des missionaires, Zelande, Paihia’, by Jacques Arago, Louis de Sainson. Gift of Horace Fildes, 1937. (Image courtesy Te Papa 1992-0035-1816)