Ivee Strazzabosco created a magnificent garden, but nature always wins in the end. By Catherine Watson
THIS week I returned to a park that’s haunted my imagination since I stumbled on it 20 years ago. Nirvana Park in Koonawarra is an enigma. About five acres of park or garden, in the midst of other large private gardens.
There are no signs to tell you it’s a public place, just a couple of overgrown signs announcing an entrance. Hard to resist and I didn’t.
I wandered around and wondered once again about the woman who loved this place for most of her life. It took some searching but I found the small brass plaque that had so intrigued me on my first visit: “In memory of Ivee Strazzabosco who lovingly devoted her life to nurturing Nirvana Park, 1993.”
THIS week I returned to a park that’s haunted my imagination since I stumbled on it 20 years ago. Nirvana Park in Koonawarra is an enigma. About five acres of park or garden, in the midst of other large private gardens.
There are no signs to tell you it’s a public place, just a couple of overgrown signs announcing an entrance. Hard to resist and I didn’t.
I wandered around and wondered once again about the woman who loved this place for most of her life. It took some searching but I found the small brass plaque that had so intrigued me on my first visit: “In memory of Ivee Strazzabosco who lovingly devoted her life to nurturing Nirvana Park, 1993.”
There are elements of an Australian native garden but also a botanical garden. Huge old eucalypts stand alongside massive conifers and deciduous trees, old casuarinas and paperbarks.
The bones of the park are still there but without the gardener, it is steadily being reclaimed by nature, and not in a good way. Agapanthus and pittosporums and blackberries are marching from the edges to the centre. Storms and vandals have also taken a toll.
The bones of the park are still there but without the gardener, it is steadily being reclaimed by nature, and not in a good way. Agapanthus and pittosporums and blackberries are marching from the edges to the centre. Storms and vandals have also taken a toll.
The first time I visited, in the early 2000s, I could find nothing about Ivee on the internet. This time, thanks to the wonders of AI, I found a beautiful essay by Nina Crone that was published in the July/August 2000 edition of Australian Garden History. It’s available under Creative Commons so I’m sure she won’t mind me quoting from it.
It tells the story of Ivee coming to Koonwarra in 1915 as an eight-year-old, her family being forced by poverty to leave during the Depression, then returning as a bride in 1939. Her husband bought the seven-acre block for her. It became her life’s work and was opened to the public in 1966.
Crone writes: “In November 1985 Ivee Strazzabosco received a [Woorayl] Shire Council award for her outstanding work in the restoration and beautification of Nirvana Park. The Shire President assured her the Park would always be preserved – ‘that the area is beyond price and must be retained for future generations’.”
“Always” is an awfully long time. Despite the fine words, Nirvana Park was in decline before the decade was out. Vandals pulled out shrubs and smashed statues and shelters. “It seems like no one cares whether the park is there or not,” Ivee said. “I’ve tried to create a special place for people and animals.”
Ivee died in early 1993 so she missed the full decline. The council really didn’t know what to do with Nirvana Park. It was just one more place to mow and prune. Parks and gardens represent a moment in time and without someone to love them they soon disappear.
My mother had a phrase that stuck in my head: “For who can measure the sorrow of one who has loved a place that the world has power to destroy.” I always thought it was from a poem but, despite ceaseless trawling of the internet by the AI bots, Google cannot trace it for me. Perhaps I’ve misremembered it.
But this piece is not all about loss. Ivee’s life was hard but it was transformed by the bonds she had with this place, the plants and animals.
The Oxford Diction defines Nirvana thus: “A transcendent state in which there is neither suffering, desire, nor sense of self, and the subject is released from the effects of karma. It represents the final goal of Buddhism.”
It’s almost a definition of people engrossed in nature. Ivee’s years of hard work and happiness were not wasted.
Crone, N. (2000). NIRVANA PARK: a Special Place for people. Australian Garden History, 12(1), 4–6. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44179492
It tells the story of Ivee coming to Koonwarra in 1915 as an eight-year-old, her family being forced by poverty to leave during the Depression, then returning as a bride in 1939. Her husband bought the seven-acre block for her. It became her life’s work and was opened to the public in 1966.
Crone writes: “In November 1985 Ivee Strazzabosco received a [Woorayl] Shire Council award for her outstanding work in the restoration and beautification of Nirvana Park. The Shire President assured her the Park would always be preserved – ‘that the area is beyond price and must be retained for future generations’.”
“Always” is an awfully long time. Despite the fine words, Nirvana Park was in decline before the decade was out. Vandals pulled out shrubs and smashed statues and shelters. “It seems like no one cares whether the park is there or not,” Ivee said. “I’ve tried to create a special place for people and animals.”
Ivee died in early 1993 so she missed the full decline. The council really didn’t know what to do with Nirvana Park. It was just one more place to mow and prune. Parks and gardens represent a moment in time and without someone to love them they soon disappear.
My mother had a phrase that stuck in my head: “For who can measure the sorrow of one who has loved a place that the world has power to destroy.” I always thought it was from a poem but, despite ceaseless trawling of the internet by the AI bots, Google cannot trace it for me. Perhaps I’ve misremembered it.
But this piece is not all about loss. Ivee’s life was hard but it was transformed by the bonds she had with this place, the plants and animals.
The Oxford Diction defines Nirvana thus: “A transcendent state in which there is neither suffering, desire, nor sense of self, and the subject is released from the effects of karma. It represents the final goal of Buddhism.”
It’s almost a definition of people engrossed in nature. Ivee’s years of hard work and happiness were not wasted.
Crone, N. (2000). NIRVANA PARK: a Special Place for people. Australian Garden History, 12(1), 4–6. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44179492