If you asked around, you would find that many people have heard of Wendy Whiteley’s Secret Garden, and some would have already been there and connected with it. It is not really a secret. It is actually one of the worst kept secrets in Sydney – it has been talked about on the radio, written about in the newspapers, viewed on countless web pages, featured on television, and it gets numerous visitors from all over Australia and the World. Wendy and her renowned artist husband, the late Brett Whiteley, set up their family home in Lavender Bay in 1970 and lived there together for two decades. Brett painted many of his iconic Sydney Harbour pictures in the house.

In the weeks that followed Brett’s death in 1992, Wendy’s grief-stricken need to regain some control in her life, to clean up a mess that she could clean up, found her obsessively attacking the piles of overgrown rubbish on the large land filled valley of unused railway land at the foot of her house. Wendy hurled herself into the forlorn site, hacking away at lantana, blackberry vines and privet, clearing up dumped bottles, rusty refrigerators, rotting mattresses, labouring till she was too exhausted to think or feel, then collapsing into sleep each night. Then doing the same, the next day and the next. Wendy never asked any authorities for permission, and no one told her to stop, so she kept going. There are so many gorgeous plants and flowers in this garden – this is just one of them.