Plans to turn an iconic Bendigo garden into a housing estate have triggered a community outcry. 

Nanga Gnulle hosted hundreds of weddings over more than two decades before its owners sold the 1.9 hectare block of land in 2014 due to old age. 

Michael Brennan brought his English bride Sheila home from London to marry her in what was the first night-time event and one of the first weddings hosted on the Strathdale property on December 8, 1990.  

“We wanted something that would be an experience for our international guests,” Mr Brennan said. 

Their ceremony was held in the Sacred Heart Cathedral but the Brennans said it was memories of the gardens which remained most vivid.

“The sense of space, the music through the gardens, the quartet playing chamber music as we walked into the marquee through a rose arch… 

“It was very relaxing, it wasn't too formal, like a British garden, so it had a very Australian feel to us.”

More than two decades and hundreds of weddings later, another Bendigo boy brought his foreign fiancee home to marry in front of family.

It was 29 March 2014, when Danny McCarroll married his Mauritian wife Christine, a date he believes marks both their formal union and Nanga Gnulle’s final wedding. 

"It was a beautiful day, a beautiful setting and it was a relaxed wedding,” Mr McCarroll said.  

It wasn’t Mr McCarroll first visit to the gardens. Seventeen-years earlier he had buried his sister Meredith there. She was 32 when she died of lymphoma after a five-year battle.  

“Nanga Gnulle would have been Meredith's idea – she planned her whole funeral,” Mr McCarroll said. 

“She knew she was passing away.” 

News that a development application had been lodged to build 15 houses on the site sparked an outcry on social media yesterday, with hundreds of comments and dozens of people recalling weddings, funerals and events they had attended there. 

The two men had different takes on the potential loss of the Nanga Gnulle gardens. But both agreed on at least one point.

“It is very sad it’s not going to be there anymore – gardens and nice places like that are diminishing, which is a shame,” Mr McCarroll said.

“I'm a glass half-full person, that’s just what happens, it is inevitable, everything changes over time ... that's progress, I suppose they call it.” 

For Mr Brennan, the potential development of the gardens would strike a blow to Bendigo’s heritage which would take decades to replace. But he did not see that outcome as inevitable. 

“Bendigo is losing a very important historic garden and, from an economic point of view, it’s a lost opportunity which can't be replaced for another 50 years,” he said.

“Gardens take time and it is a shame – that is the least you could say – that Bendigo is going to lose such an established garden and that the entrepreneurial spirit of the couple who started Nanga Gnulle is going to be lost.