sydney.com.au

Wendy's Secret Garden, a sanctuary for all comers, is no longer a secret

For a long time it was one of Sydney's best kept secrets, and that's probably because for much of the time there wasn't a lot to tell. A widow, working feverishly at digging holes for plants on neglected railway land alongside picturesque Lavender Bay, was hardly a story, let alone a secret.

But in time the plantings covered more of the urban "waste land" and a garden grew, and the garden to locals came to be known as "Wendy's Garden".

The widow in question was Wendy Whitely, wife of the leading Australian artist Brett Whitely, a gifted man who died young in 1992 and left the world a legacy of paintings that captured the beauty of the brilliant blue hues of Lavender Bay. Painting from Brett Whitely's Lavender Bay series now sell for millions of dollars.

Wendy Whitely, an artist in her own right, went through the process of grieving for her husband by spending time on the neglected patch of land below her home, which sloped down to the railway line skirting around Lavender Bay. The had been neglected for more than a century, was overgrown with lantana and being used as a dumping ground.

While Wendy was constructing her garden most Sydneysiders had no idea that a famous artist's widow was beavering away on all but forgotten railway land not all that far from Luna Park.

In time she created a semblance of a garden, and then the garden took structure and form and had a life of its own. It eventually drew others in - people who wanted to come and work in Wendy's Secret Garden. Little did Wendy know at the time that her garden would take up more than 20 years of her life and become much loved by the people who visited it.

It wasn't until the garden was well established that word got out and Sydneysiders, filled with curiosity, came to look.

Wendy had always intended that the garden would be a "people's garden" - there for all to see and enjoy - even though she reportedly has spent millions of dollars of her own money on the garden. It sits below Clark Park, which is in Lavender Street, and the easiest way to access the garden is to walk to the bottom of Clark Park - where the lawn ends and Wendy's garden begins - and look for a narrow staircase leading down into the garden.

You can also access the garden from below by walking around the Lavender Bay foreshore from Milson Point, ducking through an underpass and climbing a set of stone stairs.

Although Wendy Whitely (and helpful volunteers) had created something truly wonderful on the harbour foreshores, the garden had no permanency. There was always the likelihood that one day the government of the day would "reclaim" the land and develop it in one form or another. After all, it was railway land.

But in 2015, Mike Baird's Government leased the land to the North City Council for a 30-year period and the garden's preservation was assured. Until then successive governments had been refusing to commit to keeping it as a reserve or park. In October that year, the ABC reported NSW Transport Minister Andrew Constance as saying the lease deal meant the garden was "locked away for the beauty of everybody ... A 30-year lease with a 30-year option. I'm pretty sure it would be a game politician in 30 years' time not to continue what is absolutely beautiful."

If you spend just a few days in Sydney, the garden is one thing you should see. Ooverlooking Lavender Bay, it can easily be described as a small miracle. Perhaps it started out as therapy for a strong-minded woman who needed to work through her personal grief, but somewhere along the way it developed into a vision of something special and miraculous - Wendy's Secret Garden.

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