A SEASIDE manor is a refuge for rare, heritage plants, writes SARAH HUDSON

The powerful sugary hit that comes after nibbling on the small green leaf shocks the taste buds.

"This is a sugar plant, which is 300 times sweeter than sugar and so diabetics use it as a substitute," says my tour guide Keith Edwards.

The slice of golden beetroot, however, is much more palatable, as are the purple beans that date to the 1750s, the multi-coloured carrots and a snippet from a gargantuan frond of lettuce.

"This is an Australian yellow-leaf lettuce that was lost from Australia," Keith says.

"Seed savers in America collected seeds from the goldfields here and we were able to trace it."

To wander the grounds of Heronswood is like tastebud time-travel, providing an insight into a culinary and plant museum.

The 2ha property is home to one of the finest heritage manors on the Mornington Peninsula, a sprawling garden, nursery, shop and a charming thatched-roof, mud-brick restaurant.

But this alone fails to do Heronswood justice.

The property, which this weekend celebrates its harvest festival, is equally a wonderland, a fairy world of rare, long-lost plants and tastes.

Built in 1864 by William Hearn, the first professor of law at Melbourne University, Heronswood was truly transformed 30 years ago when it became the headquarters for the Digger's Club, under owners Clive and Penny Blazey.

The club, which has 65,000 members Australia-wide, is the nation's leading organisation for seed preservation.

Its gardeners painstakingly track down and preserve many heirloom seeds - most pre-dating World War II that were once thought lost - and they now offer a range of 250 vegetables and about 500 seeds overall through catalogue and mail sales.

On a tour of the property, Keith explains the history of plants, occasionally reaching for samples to taste-test.

"This is a carob tree, there's liquorice root, then a guava and this is a sapote, which has a fruit with custard texture," says Keith, who is a landscape architect and sales manager.

A strawberry invokes childhood memories before hybrid, high-pesticide varieties came into supermarkets.

"The reason why kids don't like their vegies now is because they have no flavour," he says. "Once you have tasted heirlooms you can't go to the supermarket and eat hybrids."

We move past the edible garden to the decorative one and Keith points to a towering, narrow plant that is more sculpture than vegetation.

"This was a plant that a particular dinosaur grazed on, a New Zealand lancewood. Its leaves are hard, tough and unappetising," he says.

"But it evolved. Because the dinosaur was about four metres high, once the plant gets to 4.5 metres it evolves into a flowering green plant.

"Most of the plants here have incredibly unusual stories to tell."

On the other side of the property, by an archway laden with beans (that Keith says was last year adorned with pumpkins "that looked like golden lanterns"), is Heronswood's crowning glory: the Fork to Fork cafe.

The menu states the kitchen philosophy as "striving to work in harmony with nature", picking from Heronswood's garden, using local growers, thereby resulting in less pollution and packaging.

Chef Luke ("Skeet") Palmer has just started a range of master classes and bi-monthly cooking classes using Heronswood produce.

Today, though, he is making salads out of pink and golden beetroots, black radish, lemon cucumbers and dikon.

"I try and use as much out of the garden as I can. The menu reflects 80 per cent of the garden," Luke says.

After four years at Heronswood, he says even he is stumped at times by nature's wizardry.

"The gardeners brought in lime fizz once. I'd never come across it. It had a kind of sherbet effect," he says.

"But the thing about working here is that I don't have to do anything too special or whiz-bang or culinary - no foams. I just let nature do its work and my job is easy."

    CHECKLIST
  • Heronswood 105 Latrobe Parade, Dromana. Harvest Festival at Heronswood, March 20-21. Ph: (03) 5984 7321 or www.diggers.com.au/