Sparks Reserve
10 The Boulevard IVANHOE, BANYULE CITY
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Statement of Significance
What is significant?
Sparks Reserve consisting of 2.6 hectares of open parkland containing mature remnant elm, osage orange, hawthorn and pine plantings is significant.
How is it significant?
Sparks Reserve is of local historic and aesthetic significance to Banyule City. The plantings of osage orange are of historic and scientific State significance.
Why is it significant?
Sparks Reserve is of local historic and aesthetic significance as the site of a section of the 1840 access road into the Ivanhoe area - the earliest access road in the area's history. A small sealed length of this road, once known as Turnpike Road, remains. The line taken by the remaining section of road, now lost, is evident soley because of an extant but interrupted row of mature elms and osage orange specimens which once bordered it and which run down to Darebin Creek. This makes a particularly evocative statement in the landscape.
Sparks Reserve is of historic and scientific State significance for its interrupted row of Osage Orange trees (Maclura pomifera), a species planted for hedging in the mid 19th century throughout Victoria and now highly uncommon. Rows or avenues of this species are particularly rare today.
Sparks Reserve is also of local historic significance for its association with the Chinese as an early market garden, with remnant vegetation, including hawthorns and pines, from this period.
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Sparks Reserve - Physical Description 1
Sparks Reserve has an area of 2.6 hectares and consists of open areas of mown grass, mixed tree plantings and a small children's playground. Darebin Creek forms its southern boundary.
An interrupted line of mature elms and osage orange trees (Maclura pomifera) delineate the line of the original Turnpike Road, and strongly suggest that an elm-lined avenue, augmented by an osage orange hedge, once bordered the road.
Two osage orange trees in Sparks Reserve were identified in the City of Banyule Significant Tree and Vegetation Study conducted by the University of Melbourne, Centre for Urban Studies (2000) and subsequently included on the Banyule City Council Significant Trees Register, Environmental Significance Overlay - Schedule 4 (August 2007).
These trees are also recognised by Heritage Victoria on its Heritage Inventory listing under the name of Darebin Creek 12 VHI H7922-0112 (Thompson Berrill Landscape Design P/L, 2008)
However a number of additional trees (both elm and osage orange) of equal age and importance, have not been included in these listings. These are located within a dense tangle of vegetation which runs from the listed trees at the north of the Reserve towards the Creek, and demonstrate the continuation of the original Turnpike Road planting.
Osage Orange was imported into Victoria from North America in the mid 1800s for use as a tight, spiny hedge. With the invention of barbed wire later in the century it fell from use. Very few mature specimens remain in Victoria today. Of those which do, most are isolated specimen trees. Rows or avenues of osage orange are particularly rare, making the Sparks Reserve interrupted line of osage orange of State significance.
Remnant vegetation possibly associated with the farming history of the Reserve include Monterey pines (Pinus radiata) in the north-eastern section of the Reserve, bordering The Boulevard, and hawthorn hedge remnants on the flats near the Creek edge. The age of the pines is not clear, however they were photographed in 1934 by local identity Chris Bailey and so date to before this time (Toomey, 1999).
Heritage Study and Grading
Banyule - Banyule Heritage Review
Author: Context P/L
Year: 2009
Grading: StateBanyule - Heidelberg Conservation Study
Author: Graeme Butler and Associates
Year: 1985
Grading:Banyule - Banyule Heritage Study
Author: Allum Lovell & Associates
Year: 1999
Grading:
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WALLER HOUSE AND COLLECTIONVictorian Heritage Register H0617
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MACGEORGE HOUSEVictorian Heritage Register H2004
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DAREBIN CREEK 6Victorian Heritage Inventory
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