“Why should a factory look like a factory?” Fletcher Jones asked his brother-in-law Darby Boucher.
After the opening of the Pleasant Hill Warrnambool factory in 1948, work began the following year on creating a garden. The site was considered an eyesore but a friend of Fletcher Jones, Ted Baker, christened the site Pleasant Hill and the name stuck. Leslie (Darby) Boucher, Fletcher Jones brother-in-law, created the gardens with artistic help from local architect Tag Walter.
First the quarry holes were blasted! Then “hundreds of loads of beach sand were dumped into and over the old cars and tanks in this rubbishy dump. Fire brigade hoses squirted the sand down out of sight again and again and a light roller finally consolidated the lot. …Four inches of heavy clay from Brierly quarry were then spread over the sand and lo and behold we looked civilised!”
Additional land was purchased and the gardens were extended to the west in 1951.
There is a granite plaque in the gardens that reads ‘Pleasant Hill is a living memorial to Leslie (Darby) Boucher, who from 1949 to 1964 transformed three unsightly quarries into these beautiful gardens.’
