Rokewood is located in Kangaroo Valley, on the outskirts of Bridgetown in the south west of Western Australia. We (Lee & Richard) purchased the property in April 2002 and moved in that December.

The name

The streets and subdivisions developed in Kangaroo Gully in the 1990s were named after apples – Rokewood Heights, Cleopatra Crescent and Democrat Close. The Rokewood apple is medium size, red in colour. The variety originated in Victoria (possibly near the town of Rokewood) in the mid-1800s. It keeps well, making it suitable for export to England by ship.

When we searched the web to find out more about the name we found references to the Rokewood family in the 1500s but these stopped very suddenly. We eventually discovered that a certain Ambrose Rokewood was hung, drawn and quartered at Westminster Hall (on Richard’s birthday!) for being an associate of Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plotters.

The Rokewood tree in our garden had a more dominant species of grafted on it – only one branch was Rokewood and that was increasingly smothered. The interloper variety has been removed, and the Rokewood branch is flowering vigorously.

House and gardens

Rokewood was owner-built around 1997. By 2002 the original owners had planted much of the framework of the present gardens around the house, and other trees and shrubs.

We have added pergolas in the ‘front’, extended towards the shed to form a home office, and developed areas of brick paving and lawns. Lee masterminded the garden development around the house, while Richard concentrated on the outer areas including development of parking and access roadways, extensive stone walls, shaping of paths and veggie plots, planting fruit trees and an extensive Kikuyu front lawn.

More recently we’ve put effort into cleaning up the bank along the front of the house. This had become ridden with rabbit burrows and fire hazard due to the large amounts of dead material under the shrubs covering the bank.