Three of the four (Bedervale, Durham Hall and Linden) have previously featured in the line-up of open gardens, but this year Exeter Farm at Jembaicumbene is also set to go on display.

Exeter Farm has been in Owen Gwinn’s family since the 1830s, but the current garden only dates to 1978. Kate Gwinn says she doesn’t have much of a gardening philosophy, but one principle she does hold is that a garden shouldn’t reveal itself all at once.

To that end, the Exeter garden meanders from one section to another with the use of gates and screening plants to lead the views through narrow spaces out into a new and sometimes unexpected wider one.

Next door to Exeter is Durham Hall. The property is framed by Braidwood’s Mount Gillamatong and the blue-hued Great Dividing Range in the distance.

It’s not hard to imagine horse-drawn carts approaching the stone steps along the now waist-high box hedges that line the looped carriageway that these days act as a hedge maze for the daughters of owners James and Belinda Royds.

The centrepiece of the garden is a massive Atlantic cedar, its branches spiralling to dizzying heights.

Also along the road to Majors Creek is the French-provincial style Linden.

Owners Henry and Leigh Fletcher inherited a sprawling garden with impressive granite entry and retaining walls, 100-year-old pine trees, a perimeter of poplars and Japanese quince, and a birch-lined driveway leading to the two-storey rendered home.

Finally, historic Bedervale, where, dotted among the informal gardens at historic are impressive sculptures created by the sister of owner, Sonia Horan. This modernist touch provides a counterpoint to the historic colonial homestead.