illustrated society magazine, and told the hostess of a dance that he would only attend if Miss Greene were there; they met, but did not dance. The next day he asked her to Sorrento. To her family’s fury, she accepted. Their engagement provoked a storm: in a peculiar turn, Elisabeth’s godfather demanded, and had returned, all the gifts he had given to the Greene girls. Keith’s old friend Dame Nellie Melba was particularly put out; but her bullying went largely unnoticed by the happy young bride. On 6th June 1928, they were married by Keith’s father, Reverend Patrick Murdoch, at the Scots’ Church. Nineteen-year-old Elisabeth accompanied her worldly, much-sought-after fiancé to a farm near Langwarrin, just behind seaside Frankston, south-east of Melbourne. Keith Murdoch renamed it Cruden Farm after his grandfather’s Free Church parish in northeast Scotland. They saw a pleasant, undistinguished cottage and a rudimentary garden and were taken by undulating paddocks and surrounding bush. After they wed, Keith presented Cruden to Elisabeth as a wedding present. He took command and, when she rejected an elaborate Italianate garden plan, he chose young garden writer Edna Walling to design the front garden. Mrs Murdoch was dismayed at not being consulted, so what might have been an impressive partnership between owner and designer never took root, although the essence of Miss Walling’s plan was accepted, adopted and, as the decades rolled on, adapted by its owner. While Miss Walling’s stone walls are a valued legacy, the most striking feature of the design is a lemon-scented eucalypt–lined drive planted by both Murdochs and their farm manager in 1930. Much of the garden was destroyed by a bushfire in 1944, but the gums survived and today 130 of them grace the entrance to what is now one of the country’s most celebrated gardens. It must be unique to find a garden that has been nurtured and shaped, lived in and shared by the same adult for more than 80 years. It began as a weekend escape for Keith Murdoch but became his family’s home and the focus of his wife’s life. During the Depression they employed men to build stables and outbuildings. A few years later Keith arrived home in a second-hand Rolls Royce; Elisabeth ordered him to return it the following day. In 1933 Keith was knighted and his wife became Lady Murdoch at the age of 24. In the same year Sir Keith bought the imposing Heathfield in Toorak, but rural Cruden remained core. It was here too, and at
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