The 91-year-old gardener started his career in the city’s Conservatory Gardens at age 14.

After eight years in the conservatory’s nursery department, Mr Maes spent nine years as a horticultural gardener at Bendigo Racecourse, seven years maintaining the gardens at Hunter House and 12 years as head gardener at Fortuna Villa.

“They were great years (at the Bendigo Conservatory),” he said.

“It was one of my first introductions to gardening. I was growing hundreds of cyclamen, cinnerias, pelegoniums, begonias, orchids and chrysanthemums to display in the glass house. It was a full year every year.

“I’m mostly self-taught. I've got no papers to my name but I can name every plant that's around.”

During his long career he also helped maintain the Goldmines Hotel gardens and worked as a florist at JV Schenk in the Bendigo CBD.

Mr Maes said hardly a day goes by that he does not do something in his garden at home, which he claims is the “Botanical Gardens of Eaglehawk”.

“It’s in my blood, gardening. I would garden at home from when I was 10. I made a beautiful garden, right on the highway at Lake Weeroona,” he said.

“To me an interest in gardening is all natural. It happens because it's in me. To a person that's not a gardener, you've got to work hard at it. To me it just flows. 

“I have that instinct in my brain to be a gardener.”

When Mr Maes isn’t pottering around his own garden, he enjoys walking through the Whipstick Forest.

“That’s my playground. My family and I love the Whipstick, gardening has grown into their genes as well,” he said.

“Orchids are great feature of the Whipstick but the poor things are very small and scarce this year.”

Mr Maes also lists Fortuna Villa’s grounds as his favourite garden having spent 12 years there for work and celebrated his diamond wedding anniversary and 90^th birthday there in recent years.

One of the highlights of his garden is a decade-old orchid he inhertied from a friend two years ago.

The native rock orchid – or cymbidium eburneo lowlanum – grows in tropical rain forest and rocky outcrops.

“They’re are an outdoor orchid that don’t need as much care,” he said.

“They don’t need a certain temperature and aren't fussy like some other orchids. These are tough, they grow on rocky outcrops.”

Mr Maes said with climate change bringing hotter temperatures he has been forced to turn away from traditional English gardens and adapt.

“Succulents and cacti love the heat and tolerate dry.”