"Gardenesque: A Celebration of Australian Gardening" @ State Library of Victoria

'Gardenesque' - it's a good word, aptly defined on the exhibition's first explanatory plaque as "a style of planting and design that distinguishes gardens as works of art, rather than as imitations of nature" (a parallel is also drawn with the notion of the 'picturesque'). The exhibition was pleasantly diverting, being comprised of various landscapes, botanical sketches, hand-drawn plans, old personal journals, gardening magazines, advertising posters ("Yates' Reliable Seeds"), books and assorted other art/material, stretching from the 1800s-1810s ("European Imagination") to 2000- ("Gardening in the Republican Manner"); in fact, in linking its treatment of gardening (broadly defined, it must be said - which was all to the better) so closely to historical developments and periods, the exhibition became as interesting for what it revealed/evoked of Australia's history as for what it had to say about its ostensible subject, gardening itself.