A New Leaf After an old tree died, the owners of this heritage Adelaide property finally saw the light.
The loss of a major tree in the front garden prompted the owners of this heritage Adelaide home to rethink their expansive plot. Structure, simplicity and softness now prevail.
The transformation of this Adelaide garden began with the demise of a wonderful old claret ash. When the homeowners, Kendall and Andrew Seaton and their three children, moved to the property 12 years ago, the tree stood as a glorious guardian of the vast 580m2 front garden. But due to a combination of old age and stress caused by extended drought, the tree withered and died in 2012.
It was a huge loss because the gentle giant, together with its understorey of agapanthas and clivias, had offered shade to the entire front garden and privacy for the gracious Victorian-era home beyond. With the main protagonist gone, the Seatons were left with a massive expanse of sloping lawn and a few rambling flowerbeds. “When the tree went, it was depressing,” says Kendall. “The front garden suddenly felt very exposed.”
Turning the loss into a new beginning, they saw it as an opportunity to renew the garden in keeping with the freshly renovated home. The couple sought out Jo Connolly of The Edge Landscape & Garden Design. “Our brief to Jo was to keep it traditional and simple,” says Kendall. “We wanted a green garden with hedging. Classic and ‘less is more’ is our preferred style.”
This was music to the ears for Jo, who believes a garden should complement its architectural surroundings. “This is a beautiful stately home on one of the main boulevards in Adelaide,” she says. “The new garden responds to the architecture and to the borrowed landscape of mature trees. It’s simple, elegant, lowmaintenance and very much in keeping with the period of the house, without being old-worldy.”
Jo’s design consists of a curved-edge rectangle of lawn framed by tall hedges for privacy. To add structure and address the halfmetre change in level, she designed a series of low, curved bluestone walls to frame raised garden beds and create seating nooks. “Bluestone sitting walls are a beautiful way to encourage people into a garden,” says Jo. “We used local stone, which tied in perfectly with the foundations of the original house.”
Strong lines of thick, manicured hedging play a key role in the scheme. A row of Viburnum odoratissimum was retained along the driveway, but the rest of the hedging is new. Along the wrought-iron front fence, Jo planted Viburnum tinus because it’s more drought-tolerant than V.odoratissimum, requires less water and copes well in full sun. The low hedging and clipped balls are Japanese box ( Buxus microphylla var. japonica), which thrives in shade and sun without guzzling water. “I like to use plants that require a minimum of water,” says Jo.
White crepe myrtles ( Lagerstroemia ‘ Natchez’) provide vertical impact while an avenue of Ginkgo biloba has been planted along the driveway. Two more ginkgos sit on either side of a stone sitting wall in the lawned area. A raised corner bed is planted with a small forest of Magnolia grandiflora ‘Kay Parris’ circling a Chinese elm ( Ulmus parvifolia). “Generally, in Adelaide, I’m hesitant to plant magnolias, but we’ve built up raised beds with loads of great compost and they’re thriving,” says Jo.
Lower-level plants include cycads, dark-green clipped balls of Indian hawthorn ( Rhaphiolepis ‘Oriental Pearl’), Agave attenuata and massed plantings of clivias and agapanthas, which were saved from the original garden. Groundcovers include both Chinese star jasmine and Asiatic star jasmine.
“In a garden like this, with its layers of green, the key is to create interest by mixing up the leaf shape and size in a subtle way,” says Jo. “You can create lovely structure, but you need a mix of textures to add romance, which makes the garden more relaxed and enjoyable to be in.”
One of the standout areas is the new 100m2 side garden, transformed from blank lawn into two private garden ‘rooms’ framed with tall hedges of Hibiscus tileaceus. Each features a gravel ‘floor’ dotted with ornamental pear trees ( Pyrus calleryana
‘Chanticleer’) and a Manzanillo olive tree ( Olea europaea
‘Manzanillo’). A steel sphere sculpture is the centrepiece of one of these rooms; in the other, a table and two chairs form a quiet seating area in the shade.
After the success of the revamped front and side gardens, the Seatons asked Jo to landscape the rear entertaining area and pool zone. This involved replacing spiky, architectural plants with softer plantings such as a Japanese box hedging, lemon and lime trees in pots and Ficus pumila climbing on the walls.
Then came the Seatons’ request to create an outdoor shower in the courtyard off the main bedroom. Jo responded by treating the 2.5x4.5m space as a tiny Japanese garden, complete with a Japanese maple tree ( Acer palmatum), gravel surface with bluestone stepping stones and a copper shower fitting. This little jewel is no mere folly, says Kendall. “Andrew adores his outdoor shower – he uses it every day.”