The Cottage Garden Experience

A curated Blue Mountains experience of gardens, making and homemade hospitality



2 hours Experience size 1 to 8 guests    

  $80 (Afterpay available)
Blue Mountains Activities
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Flowers & Plants
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Gardening
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Experiences Experience Gifts
Garden tour

Garden Tour

Take a guided tour through Ann and Rob's much-loved Blue Mountains cottage garden. Hear the stories behind the spaces they've created together, discover some of their favourite plants and design ideas, and learn how the garden has evolved through hands-on making, experimentation, and a love of working with what they have.


Scones in the garden

Scones in the Garden

After exploring the garden, we invite you to enjoy freshly baked scones with homemade jam and cream, prepared by Ann using a treasured family recipe.

Take a seat, relax, and enjoy some good old-fashioned homemade hospitality and conversation in the peaceful garden setting.


Make and Plant

Make and Plant

After morning tea, head into the garden workshop for a relaxed, hands-on planting/making session inspired by the garden and the season. Using seasonal plants and salvaged, reclaimed, or repurposed materials, you'll create something of your own to take home and enjoy.

Projects change throughout the year, depending on the season and what's available in the garden. The images shown are examples of the kinds of projects you might make.


Meeting place

Meeting Place

Let's meet at the cottage workshop door, just down the driveway.


Step away from the usual Blue Mountains itinerary and spend a couple of relaxed hours with Ann and Rob in their much-loved cottage garden.
You'll begin at the rustic garden workshop before taking a leisurely walk through the garden that Ann and Rob have created and shaped together. As you wander, you'll hear the stories behind the garden, discover favourite plants and hidden corners, and learn about some of the ideas, experiments, and practical projects that have helped the garden evolve.
After your garden tour, you'll enjoy homemade morning tea. Enjoy freshly baked scones with homemade jam and cream, prepared by Ann using a treasured family recipe. This is deliberately an unhurried part of the experience: a chance to relax, connect with other people, ask questions, enjoy good conversation, and old-fashioned homemade hospitality.
You'll then head into the garden workshop for a relaxed, hands-on making/planting experience inspired by the garden and the season. Using seasonal plants and reclaimed or repurposed materials, you'll make something of your own to take home with you.
What you make will change throughout the year, depending on the season, what's growing in the garden, and the materials available. You might create a small jar-planted succulent, work with propagated plants, or a simple herb drying rack. The projects shown in our photographs are examples, so each season may bring something a little different.
You don't need any gardening or making experience. Ann and Rob will guide you through the activity and provide everything you need.
You'll leave with your own little piece of Serendipity Garden, and plenty of fresh inspiration for your own garden and making. More than anything, we hope you'll leave feeling like you've spent a couple of hours somewhere special, making, sharing, and enjoying the simple pleasure of homemade hospitality in the Blue Mountains.

Upcoming dates for The Cottage Garden Experience

Times are Sydney time. Dates and prices as of 9 Oct 2026, 9:08am; availability and price are confirmed live when booking on this page.

2 upcoming dates between 7 Nov 2026 and 5 Dec 2026.

  • Sat 7 Nov 2026, 10am-12pm
  • Sat 5 Dec 2026, 10am-12pm
What you'll get
  • A guided tour of Ann and Rob's private Blue Mountains cottage garden
  • Homemade scones served with cream and Ann's homemade family-recipe jam
  • A relaxed, seasonal garden-making workshop
  • All plants, materials, and tools needed for the making activity
  • A finished garden creation (for example: succulent in a jar or herb drying rack; see pictures)
  • Practical gardening and making ideas shared throughout the experience
  • Approximately two hours of personal, small-group hospitality
Knowledge required
No prior gardening or making experience is required. This experience is suitable for beginners, and Ann and Rob will guide you through each step of the activity.
What to bring
Comfortable shoes and clothing suitable for spending time in the garden and getting your hands a little dirty. As part of the experience takes place outdoors, we recommend dressing for the Blue Mountains weather and bringing a hat and jacket when appropriate. Everything you need for the making activity will be provided.
Location

Katoomba, NSW

Exact location is masked for privacy. You'll automatically get the specific address after booking.

The Cottage Garden Experience location
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Your host

Serendipity Cottage
Serendipity Cottage

female Women-owned

We're Ann and Rob, and for as long as we can remember, we've been making places feel like home. Over the years, we've renovated many homes, transformed dirt-pitch gardens into green oases, created beautiful spaces, and taken on more projects than we could possibly count. We've always loved seeing the potential in a place - whether it's breathing life into a run down cottage or nurturing beautiful gardens into existence, this is what we love doing.
Rob has worked in food and agriculture for his entire career. He brings decades of experience developing and delivering practical training programs across many areas of agriculture. Throughout his career, he has combined hands-on knowledge of growing plants, developing gardens and working with the land with a strong ability to share that knowledge in an approachable and practical way. He has also developed and run school engagement programs, working with students and teachers to rear and prepare livestock for agricultural shows at both the regional level and the Sydney Royal Easter Show. His teaching style is grounded in real world experience - sharing skills and knowledge gained through a lifetime of working with his hands in the soil.
Ann has a background in hospitality, and community as well as a strong creative eye and a natural instinct for bringing all the elements of a space together. She loves the details that turn a house into a home and a garden into somewhere people want to linger.
Together, we've run a five-star boutique hotel in Mudgee, an airB&B on the south coast with Superhost status, and a fine cheese business in Sydney in the early 2000. Creating something special and then sharing it with other people has been a thread through much of our life together.
Our Blue Mountains cottage and garden is our favourite place to be. It's not a show garden, created overnight. It has evolved from years of experimentation and learning. We're big advocates of reusing materials and sustainability.
After all these years, we realised we have quite a lot of knowledge and experience to share; and that's really why we decided to create this experience.
We'd love to welcome you into our Blue Mountains garden, share some of what we know and have learned along the way, as well as enjoy some morning tea with Ann's homemade scones (a family recipe), and finish with a simple hands-on project for you to make and take home.
For us, this is a chance to share a little of what we've learned over a lifetime of gardens, homes, making, and hosting - and hopefully send you home with a few ideas and some inspiration of your own.
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Gardening
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class 0 V48I01Z33L 34c052b7f77f35dccea660a6ce51910d 1 production blue-mountains Blue Mountains NSW AU blue-mountains