What began as a description of this garden became the story of a community. While researching the garden at Old Bridge House for a conservation report, the writer was drawn into the lives of the settlers at ‘the Margaret’, as the small founding community of Margaret River was known. Tracing the families associated with Old Bridge House, this story follows their links through the generations and underlines the roles they played in shaping Margaret River as it is today. It charts their many sagas and supplies insights into the personalities of those involved. Liberally supplemented with extracts from diaries and letters, it provides the reader with a strong sense of ‘being there’ as each leave their mark on Margaret River’s emerging social heritage. Dorothy Peirce’s mark is a beautiful garden. Gillian Lilleyman, A Garden on the Margaret: the path to Old Bridge House, ISBN 9780646553467, 24cm x 24cm Hardback, 136 pages plus index RRP $49.95 Gillian Lilleyman is co-author of A Landscape for Learning: a History of the Grounds of the University of Western Australia and the Crawley Campus Conservation Management Plan, and is a contributor to a forthcoming centennial history of the University. She contributed to the West Australian Branch of the Australian Garden History Society publication A Guide to Conserving and Interpreting Gardens in Western Australia and has written papers on the early landscaping of Perth’s foreshore.

If you’ve a penchant for old gardens and history, then this beautiful book must be on the top of your wish list. Gillian Lilleyman’s masterly research traces the history of Old Bridge House from its earliest days as a halfway point on the road between Augusta and the Vasse. Built by the Bussell family, Bridge House along with other Bussell properties at Wallcliffe and Ellensbrook, were the cornerstones of settlement in the south west, long before the township of Margaret River was established.Along with the architectural and social history of Bridge House, Lilleyman adds a fascinating layer of garden history that continues to the present day. This trail begins with the arrival in mid 1921 of an English gardener Alfred Peirce at Lawnbrook in what was then known as Heidelberg, now Bickley Valley. By the end of the same year, Alfred married Dorothy Loaring of Lawnbrook, before the couple moved to Bridge House to begin family life and establish a garden. The present occupants of Old Bridge House Zoe, Barbara and Shirley Peirce have generously shared family documents and photographs for inclusion in the book. They have inherited their parents’ passion for gardening and from time to time have opened the garden to special interest groups and Australia’s Open Garden Scheme. Now Old Bridge House, which must be considered a West Australian treasure of garden and social history, will be immortalised in Lilleyman’s magnificently illustrated book with its garden plan by Leon Pericles and a comprehensive plant list. I’m delighted to add such a treasure to my library of garden books. Noela Shepherd