a private and romantic country garden

 our home

an expression of our love

and, because it is special, and beautiful, we make the garden available for a few months of the year, for a few special couples, for their wedding ceremony, party and reception.

We welcome enquiries from like-minded romantics seeking a unique, exclusive, romantic location for their special event.

Located in the beautiful Little Mulgrave Valley near Cairns, LALOLI is a garden of love and laughter, an exclusive and private, traditional family garden space that is simply perfect for romantic garden weddings.

 Surrounded by rivers and mountain ranges, LALOLI is a garden of intimate enchantment and romance, a unique and special place.

LALOLI is surrounded by rivers, mountain ranges and sugar cane, and includes our old farm shed, "The Sugar Shed", a sweet and awesome rustic undercover party space that wears the patina of decades of authentic use as a working cane farm shed.

Create magical memories for you, your family and friends by hosting the whole of your wedding event in the one venue.

While you are having your wedding photographs taken either in the numerous locations throughout the garden, or at the wild rivers nearby, your guests can explore the grounds, play old-fashioned games on the lawns, and be treated to a garden party at The Barracks Bar, on the Pyramid Lawn, in the Bamboo Chapel, or on the Western Lawn in-between your ceremony and reception function.

Throughout your event, you and your guests are welcome to wander throughout our private property - a relaxed and, in places, wild garden with secret and romantic places, delight in the night-scented blossom, and thrall to the unusual beauty of the night bird calls.

Every wedding at LALOLI is a unique and special event – memorable for you – and for us.

Our couples and their guests feel "at home" and part of our family for their special day.

A tiny bit more about how LALOLI, and how it came to be:

Some time, last century, I arrived at my beloved's home with two small boys, and my gardening tools. There was no garden here then, just a few palm trees, a lychee tree and a mango tree, and a sole valiant ixora. We were surrounded by fields of sugar cane that came right up to house. What an opportunity to establish a garden!

I grew up in the country: my childhood memories are rich with images of romantic, old country gardens. Those gardens were cold climate gardens, a world away from the hot and wild wet tropics that intrigued me then, and are now my home. I loved the sprawl of those old gardens, with their meandering paths wandering under huge trees, under mature camellias and roses carelessly dropping their abundant fragrant blossom, and leading to wild, secret fairy gardens filled with maidenhair fern and moss. I was certain that fairies sheltered under those delicate fronds, and part of me remains convinced that there is a special magic associated with neglected, quiet and forgotten gardens.

Another century, more small boys, and the garden is finding its feet, finding its purpose. My beloved, then a farmer, now a gardener, is with me in this shared dream of a beautiful place, a place that we share with other romantically minded lovers who wish for a place that resonates with times past, and anticipates an endless future. A place that satisfies our needs - fruit trees, a tropical winter vegetable garden, fragrant flowers and shady glades. A place for grandchildren to be lost in imagination, for family and friends to find peace and connection with our history on this land. A place where stands of mature trees cast pools of cool, deep, dark shade, and where birds and butterflies abound, where forgotten corners reveal surprising unseen beauty, where wildness is always just a moment away!

The garden found a name: laugh, love, live - LALOLI!