SUNDAY'S GARDEN Growing Heide

In this companion volume to the bestselling book Sunday’s Kitchen, the physical environment of Heide is explored. When Sunday and John Reed purchased Heide, now the site of the Heide Museum of Modern Art, it was a neglected former dairy farm. At the end of their lives, it was unique among Melbourne’s parklands, densely forested with exotic and native flora and a stunningly beautiful cottage-style kitchen garden as the jewel in its crown. The transformation is an extraordinary aesthetic accomplishment, the result of 50 years of vision, dedication, and sheer hard work. Exploring Heide’s history, this book demonstrates how the Reeds molded it into a personal Eden, connecting art with nature and creating a nourishing environment for the artists they championed—Sidney Nolan, Albert Tucker, Joy Hester, Charles Blackman, and Mirka Mora among them.

Lesley Harding is a curator at the Heide Museum of Modern Art. She is the former senior curator at the Victorian Arts Center Trust, inaugural curator at the National Art School in Sydney, and the coauthor of Cubism & Australian Art. Kendrah Morgan is a curator at the Heide Museum of Modern Art. She is the former assistant curator of New Zealand and international art at the Auckland Art Gallery and a lecturer in art history at the University of Auckland. They are coauthors of Sunday’s Kitchen. Mirka Mora is a prominent French-born Australian visual artist who has contributed significantly to the development of contemporary art in Australia. Her mediums include painting, sculpture, and mosaics. She was close friends with John and Sunday Reed, and spent many weekends at Heide.