Gardens Sense Of Place
In the fertile Sunshine Coast hinterland, a wondrous garden speaks to the ultra-modern home it surrounds while keeping in tune with the landscape beyond.
Head to the Sunshine Coast hinterland and explore a native garden that is in perfect harmony with its surroundings.
Approaching Brenda and Randy’s property feels a bit like entering a magical realm. Their 800 metre-long driveway takes you on a journey across a creek, up a hill, through subtropical rainforest, across a paddock, and alongside a cascading waterfall before arriving at a row of lilly pillies, ushering you to the home. “You feel like you’re in another world,” says Brenda.
The 10 hectare (25 acre) property is perched on a ridge in the fertile Blackall Range near Montville, in Queensland’s Sunshine Coast hinterland. Brenda and Randy bought the land – a former citrus and pineapple farm – back in 2010 when they were still living in Melbourne, working in corporate roles. They originally planned to purchase a smaller plot, but when they spotted this block and its amazing views, they were smitten.
They built a home a few years later, while still living interstate, enlisting Sunshine Coast firm Sparks Architects to create a contemporaryhomethatwouldnuzzlethelandscapeandembrace sustainable-design principles. The completed home comprises two pavilions joined by a timber breezeway with a cantilevered viewing platform that juts out over the ridgeline.
Fromtheoutset,thecouplewantedagardentogrowinharmony with the house. Their architect enlisted landscape architect Marc
Conlon, director of Conlon Group, to create a garden to match the aspirations of the home. “We very much wanted a native garden,” says Brenda. “But neither of us were gardeners, so it also needed to be low maintenance.”
Marc’s approach was to create a garden that would “take on a sense of place, drawing on the textures and colours of the natural landscape and using local materials”. Thanks to the Montville climate – including an annual rainfall of well over one metre – and the fertile soils of the former farm, he had good bones to work with. Just as the house sits in the natural contours of the land, so too Marc wanted the garden to work with the natural landforms. “The aim was to hug the house with low-lying natives, using a structured palette of groundcovers,” he says.
Because of the size of the site, Marc was able to work with massed plantings of species including lomandra, baeckea, dianella, white fan-flower ( Scaevola albida) and “flares” of knobby matt rush ( Ficinia nodosa). To this mix, he added a taller layer of shrubs and ferns including hairpin banksia ( Banksia spinulosa), lilly pilly ( Syzygium australe) and riberry ( Syzygium luehmannii). Then came the tree ferns ( Cyathea cooperi), forest grass trees ( Xanthorrhoea johnsonii) and Australian fan palm ( Licuala ramsayi), all adding bursts and flourishes of foliage.
Feature plants
TREES & SHRUBS Forest grass tree ( Xanthorrhoea johnsonii) Tree fern ( Cyathea cooperi) Hairpin banksia ( Banksia spinulosa) Swamp banksia ( Banksia robur)
Lilly pilly ( Syzygium australe)
GROUNDCOVERS
Lomandra sp Dianella sp White fan-flower ( Scaevola albida) Alpine baeckea ( Baeckea gunniana) Weeping baeckea ( Baeckea frutescens)
Bronze rambler grevillea ( Grevillea sp) No-mow grass ( Zoysia tenuifolia)
All the hardscaping elements are earthy and raw: the pathways are gravel, the steps are made from stone and concrete, and there are basalt boulders in nonchalant clusters throughout the garden. In the breezeway, large stone steppers are dotted through nomow lawn ( Zoysia tenuifolia) and below the house, a large corten steel firepit is surrounded by chunky weathered sleepers. “It’s rustic and zen,” says Marc. “We’ve blurred the lines between garden and surrounding landscape.” Brenda feels that the garden is a good match for the architecure of the home: “The house is quite strong, architecturally, but the garden has strength, too. I love that it combines soft textures and bold elements.”
Since moving to the property in 2015, Brenda and Randy have thrown themselves into caring for the garden, which now covers 0.4 hectares (about 1 acre). “We’re more and more engaged with the garden,” says Brenda. “It’s very satisfying to see how we’re improving the property.” Early on, they joined Land for Wildlife to learn about conserving and managing wildlife habitats on the property. They’re also involved in the local Landcare group. “It’s a very diverse piece of land here and we want to manage that biodiversity,” says Brenda.
Most of their energy is spent removing privet and restoring the creek system, as well as revegetation. “We’ve planted 1500 shrubs and trees – all native tubestock – since we’ve been here” says Brenda. “And Randy has become a propagator. He has a passion for collecting seeds and growing from seed, and it’s lovely for him to have that connection with the place.”
While they have help with weeding and general maintenance, they do much of the work themselves, and always have a project on the go. Their latest plans? A forage garden and the introduction of native beehives. And when they need a break, they just stand back and enjoy that view – and the raucous birdlife.
Conlon Group, Maroochydore, Queensland; conlongroup.com.au.