October 2nd, 2024Glen, about the house

Glen unmasked…

Glen Heyne is the eldest fourth-generation member of Adelaide’s leading nursery, where he worked until his two younger brothers finished school.

Realising that he could make better use of his communication skills in more conducive surroundings, he packed up his battered old typewriter and left home.

Now, after 60 years of freelance journalism, radio, TV and PR agencies, you’ll find him here, in Daylesford, ancient, retired and having a ball. Dredging up almost lost memories to entertain himself and (hopefully) help in your garden.

I only hope that my mentor, great-grandfather Ernst Bernhard was sitting in ‘The Garden’ when the first copy hit the streets. I know he would have smiled to see the Heyne name at the masthead of ‘his’ garden page of The Chronicle, South Australia’s Weekly Times counterpart – almost 100 years from his final edition on July 5, 1974 – my birthday.

E.B.H., the second son of Meissen surgeon, Carl August Heyne and Marianne Tierof, was educated at Leipzig University where he received his Diploma of Botany.

He was also an accomplished linguist and mathematician. E.B obtained a position at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Leipzig and was appointed to lead a party of noted botanists to seek new orchids in South America.

That was cancelled due to the political uprisings in Europe of that time. His brother Carl, involved in politics in Hamburg, had just shot and killed a military officer in a duel and was obliged to flee to America.

Although E.B.H. had played no part in the duel, other than hold his brother’s coat, with the political situation ready to boil over, he decided to emigrate.

He left Hamburg on October 2, 1848, on the sailing ship Godefroi and accompanied a family to Victoria, as a tutor.

He wrote on his journey and arrival in Melbourne, in a series of letters and included detailed observations of the climate, soil and vegetation, the habits of the colonists and gave excellent advice for prospective migrants. Much of which is still relevant.

E.B.H. was appointed chief plantsman and draftsman at Melbourne Botanic Gardens (pictured above) and drew up one of the earliest designs, under the direction of Dr von Mueller, for the layout of the Botanic Gardens.

E.B.H. then travelled to South Australia in 1868 on a plant-collecting expedition. He is credited with making a collection of the tree fern, Dicksonia Antarctica, in its natural habitat, possibly the last collected in the Mt Lofty Ranges.

In 1869 he moved to Adelaide, bought a house in Norwood and established a small nursery on an adjoining property to supply the shop he had opened on Rundle Street. He married Laura, the daughter of publishers/booksellers Edward and Laura Hanckel.

In 1871 his books, The Amateur Gardener for South Australia and The Fruit, Flower and Vegetable Garden, were published and eventually ran to four editions – the first of their kind in South Australia.

E.B.H. was commemorated by the naming of two species he discovered on the several plant-collecting expeditions into the outback with von Mueller during the 1850s – aster heynei F. Meull and Cyperus ornatus heynei.

He was secretary of the Vignerons’ Club which, in 1876, presented him with a gold watch as a tribute to his work with the wine industry, especially in the eradication of the vine-killing plague, phylloxera.

As an aside, I recently discovered the list of phylloxera-resistant wine grapes he produced had been taken up and published by the wine growers of California helping somewhat, one would presume, to save their industry.

It has been more than a century since E.B.H. put the Heyne family on the Australian botanical map. I am delighted and proud to have heard and answered the call, through my broadcasts and writing