Interview Recording
Interview Transcript
Robyn Mayo Hawkins interviewed on 26 May 2021 by Jean Elder
This is an interview with Robyn Mayo Hawkins recorded for the Australian Garden History’s National Oral History Collection. Robyn, a gardener and artist, is speaking about her life as a gardener and artist and her involvement with the Australian Garden History Society.
Synopsis
Robyn Mayo Hawkins is an accomplished gardener and artist of national standing who uses her skills of observation of the landscape and the detailed life cycles of plants and animals to inform her practice in both areas.
Over a period of 50 years Robyn and her husband John have owned three 19th century homes and gardens in New South Wales and Tasmania. After managing and extending a traditional English garden of roses, hydrangeas and ground covers at ‘Tarella’ in North Sydney they moved to ‘Whitley’ in the Southern Highlands where Robyn established her first native garden.
Robyn was an early member of the Southern Highlands branch of the AGHS (NSW) prior to moving to Tasmania, where she served as State President of the AGHS (Tasmania). She initiated the branch newsletter Blue Gum, and organised visits to private gardens, which highlighted the importance of garden history and preservation.
Her deep interest in gardens, botany, and the way in which changing environmental conditions impact on the landscape, are revealed in her artwork. Her solo exhibitions emphasise this with such titles as Artistic Reflections on the Garden, Artistic Reflections on the Tree and Australian Flora, 200 Years of Environmental and Cultural Change.
Field trips to the Kimberley from 1989, and later to the Central Australian desert, extended her art practice to a new vision of the landscape. The experience introduced geological formations and the unique fauna and flora of the area to her work. It also established a curiosity about the influence of plants in aboriginal life. Two major exhibitions Kimberley Odyssey and Vast, together with books of the same title, resulted from these studies.
In 2002 Robyn and John moved to the property ‘Bentley’ at Chudleigh in Northern Tasmania where Robyn has overseen the design and extensive planting of the grounds surrounding the homestead and farm. The transformation of ‘Bentley,’ sitting in a spectacular valley under the Great Western Tiers, is now recognised as a significant cultural landscape. This major undertaking includes an arboretum comprising 50,000 native trees.
Today Robyn’s current work concentrates on Tasmanian native flora and fauna, and the mountain landscapes and coastal ranges of northern Tasmania.