Protecting the lofty giants
They’ve survived catastrophic bushfire, drought and even a trunk-splitting lightning strike, and now Mount Lofty Estate’s 175-year-old sequoia trees are under a custodianship that is working to see them enjoyed by many generations to come.
During the Jurassic period, 200 million years ago, the forests of North America and Europe were dominated by mighty sequoiadendron trees. With gargantuan trunks that dwarfed the dinosaurs roaming between them, the ancient giants thrived at a time when the planet was humid and the atmosphere rich in carbon dioxide.
As the earth began to change over millions of years, and the dinosaurs died out, the trees retreated to specific regions of California’s Sierra Nevada mountains, where deep soil, mountain springs and the humid coastal air allowed them to survive.
The giant sequoia (Sequoiadendron giganteum) is a descendant of this prehistoric genus, which dates back hundreds of millions of years. Today, California’s giant sequoias — the world’s largest trees — are among the oldest living organisms on earth, with some trees dated at more than 3200 years of age.
Closely related to the giant sequoia is the coastal redwood (Sequoia sempervirens), which also hails from California, where a famed 600-year-old specimen named Hyperion is currently the world’s tallest living tree at 116 metres high. Coastal redwoods often grow in groves, and their extensive horizontal root systems can intertwine with other redwoods for stability.
When the Western discovery of giant sequoias was publicised in the mid-1800s, it captured imaginations around the world. In England, sequoias were planted in country estates as status symbols. It was during this era, from 1852, that South Australian settler, businessman and politician Arthur Hardy was planting out the grounds of his Mount Lofty summer house.
Now four-years-old, this sequoia tree was planted within the Sequoia Lodge compound, near its 175-year-old giant siblings.
The house was a means for Arthur, his wife Martha and their family, to escape the hot summers of the Adelaide plains, and trees would play an important role. The couple had a penchant for throwing lavish private dinner parties, but it was on the grounds where Arthur followed his true passion: horticulture. He experimented with many different plants and trees, with the garden’s plantings organised into different continental origins.
Arthur planted three sequoias just a short walk south-east of the home’s grand gothic entrance. Now 175 years old, the three sequoias have seen 15 different owners of the estate come and go and survived the 1983 Ash Wednesday bushfires, which destroyed the historic mansion.
An aerial view taken after the property was razed by the Ash Wednesday bushfires in 1983.
After the fires, the property was purchased and restored by local architect Ross Sands who turned it into a boutique hotel. In 2009, the property was sold to its current custodian David Horbelt who has spent the ensuing years restoring the estate.
David is a long-time hotelier with a strong interest in restoration projects. Currently, he is restoring the nearby Arthur’s Seat historic ruins to create a grand home that may be used for special guests of Mount Lofty House. He is also collaborating with celebrated chef Justin James to later this year launch Restaurant Aptos — a world-class dining destination inside a renovated 165-year-old church at Stirling.
David, the director of Prime Hotels, has overseen significant improvements to the Mount Lofty house and grounds, most notably with the creation of the luxury six-star Sequoia Lodge.
“I was enamoured by the trees when I first purchased this property. Many of the Arthur Hardy plantings around here are the oldest of their kind in the state,” says David.
“Arthur Hardy was many things — a pastoralist, a Crown prosecutor and much more — but his epitaph describes him as a planter of trees, because that’s what his passion was. He owned 400 hectares, including land that is now the Mount Lofty Botanic Garden, and he planted what is believed to be the first vineyard in the Adelaide Hills.
“It’s an incredible array of beautiful flora right here on the top of Mount Lofty. With these gardens and ancient trees, you’ve got to view time in spans of decades or even hundreds of years.”
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Directly in front of Mount Lofty House is the first of the sequoias, the giant sequoia, which bears the deep scarring of Ash Wednesday. Impressively, this survivor’s bark has overgrown the charred trunk, demonstrating the resilience of the sequoias which are well-adapted to forest fires.
The finest example of the three sequoias – a sequoia sempervirens – is found just a short distance away among the thick growth of the grounds. With an enormous trunk measuring 12 metres in diameter, this sequoia’s colossal size is somewhat hidden by other trees, and it’s not until getting up close that one appreciates its full scale. Here, guests can book a dining experience in a “garden dome” under the shade of the tree’s far-reaching limbs.
A little further on, inside the Sequoia Lodge compound, is the third sequoia. This specimen was once struck by lightning that split the top of the tree. It has also been nurtured back from recent ill-health. As insurance for the future, it now has a new sibling — a baby sequoia — planted nearby.
The fast-growing seedling has grown to more than four metres tall in just four years.
“Of the ancients here, the sequoias are the great ones, because they live for thousands of years, and only something as significant as Ash Wednesday might stop them,” says David. “Their foliage loses some of its greenness in the driest of times, but we’re in drought now, and they still appear very healthy.”
This coastal redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) was planted when Arthur Hardy was establishing the grounds of Mount Lofty Estate 175 years ago. A garden dome provides guests with an opportunity to dine underneath the far-reaching limbs of this grand specimen.
Arborists keep an eye on the trees’ health from time to time. With Ash Wednesday in mind, David has overseen various methods of reducing bushfire risk, including the installation of an extensive fire hydrant line with access points all around the property. He is grateful for South Australia’s water-bombing aircraft, which he has witnessed putting out spot fires in the nearby hills over the years.
“It’s been 17 years of reinvestment, because the property was more akin to a B&B when I bought it. Now it’s the number one five-star luxury hotel in South Australia,” says David. In addition, Mount Lofty Estate has won awards for the six-star Sequoia Lodge, the three chef-hatted Hardy’s Verandah Restaurant and Gatekeeper’s Day Spa.
Just as the Hardys treasured the gardens, so too do David and his team appreciate the importance of the grounds and its ancient trees.
With giant sequoias known to live for thousands of years, they are set to become Arthur Hardy’s most long-lived legacy.
As the adage goes: A society grows great when people plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.
David explains: “We’re working to continue the legacy because it’s the incredible trees and plantings that make the estate so important. It is a custodianship and it’s our job to protect them.”
This article first appeared in the May 2025 issue of SALIFE magazine.
