Joy and Bruno Plos plan to farewell Griffith Festival of Gardens

Bruno and Joy Plos, who have been married for 64 years, have been involved with the Griffith Festival of Gardens since day dot.

However, this could be the last year that the Plos’ enter their garden into the festival. 

Their house is up for sale.

Nothing has been set in stone yet and if it doesn't sell they will go around for another year.

Gardening will no doubt always be a part of their life.

“For us it’s (gardening) not work,” Mrs Plos said.

“I get home from town and get the wheelbarrow. 

“It’s just peaceful, you wake up and all you hear is the birds, no through traffic.”

The sale would call time on a lengthy association with the festival.

The Plos’ even came up with an early idea for the festival.

“We used to love visiting gardens away, we’d make a weekend of it,” Mrs Plos said.

“We’d come home and, because the water wasn't metered, we’d see water running down the gutters and it just hit us.

“We said ‘we go away to see gardens, why can’t we have it here with all this water’.”

Mr Plos still remembers the organisation with the Griffith Visitor’s Centre that followed.

“We had a quick meeting and it snowballed from there,” he said.

“For a while there we thought that it might lose interest, but now it’s picked up again and I think the interest is becoming more-so.

“And of course we have the citrus sculptures, they do compliment it, they are really something.”

The festival of gardens is now in it’s 25th year.

The Plos’ said many things had changed since the festival’s first year.

They said it had gotten bigger and better which was only natural.

There was also some forced changes that had to be made to the garden over the years.

“As the drought came we lost things,” Mrs Plos said.

“We took truckloads of stuff away because they were dead sick, so we had to change to different plants.”

The Plos’ garden will be open to the public from Friday to Monday this weekend.