Outside In
Taking cues from the layered home, Melbourne landscape designer Jane Jones devised a garden of details and perfectly framed vignettes.
This Melbourne garden by Jane Jones is a masterclass in picturesque vignettes.
Enhancing the indoor-outdoor connection is an established tenet of interior design. It’s an equally important principle when designing a garden, too. Melbourne landscape designer Jane Jones says she always considers the style of a home’s interiors – and the views from inside looking out – when shaping and planting an outdoor space. These were particularly important considerations in designing this wondrous garden in Toorak. “You can see the garden from the south- and east-facing rooms of the home,” says Jane. “So I was forever mindful of framing the views and enhancing that sense of the garden coming into the house.”
The home at the centre of this property is a gracious 1930s residence designed by Modernist architect Marcus Martin, with a recent renovation overseen by architect Stephen Akehurst. Once the refurbishment was completed, the homeowners felt the house could connect better with the garden. They had loved Jane’s work at their previous home and enlisted her expertise again for this project.
Their brief was to soften the existing paved areas around the home and to make the garden more lush and inviting. “They wanted an interesting garden with a bit of wow factor and an attention to detail to match the kind of detailing they have inside the house,” says Jane. Naturally, she took her cues from the interiors. “Their home is decorated with beautiful wallpapers and lots of interesting layers, and I wanted to echo that outside. I wanted to create wallpaper for the garden.”
At the front of the house, where garden space is tight, Jane introduced greenery in intriguing ways. For example, she planted star jasmine ( Trachelospermum jasminoides) inside the brick front fence, then core-drilled the brickwork and pushed the plant through the fence to create a pretty grid-like pattern of greenery at the street frontage. Around the front portico, there is Japanese box ( Buxus microphylla var. japonica), clipped into clusters of balls, with wisteria climbing the portico’s columns. Oversized pots are planted with cloud-pruned camellias ( Camellia japonica) and luma trees ( Luma apiculata), creating height. Japanese plum-yew ( Cephalotaxus harringtonia) is planted along the front windows of the house.
The back garden is less formal than the front. Here, Jane’s mission was to create “gardenesque” spaces consisting of perfectly composed displays of plants to match the interiors.
A priority was to soften the hardscaping around the pool, so she reduced the area of crazy paving and inserted bursts of greenery wherever possible. This included planting pratia ( Pratia pusila) in between the stone pavers and framing the area with textured garden beds. Where space was limited, such as beside the pool, she installed pots filled with eye-catching plants such as cloud-pruned olive trees and Luma apiculata.
In an under-utilised area next to the pool, she designed a raised fire pit and semi-circular stone bench to match. Fringing this is a tapestry of woodland-style plants, including a groundcover of native violet ( Viola hederacea), clumpsofsedum,purple-flowering sea lavender ( Limonium perezii) and Agastache ‘Blue Boa’, with wisteria planted as standards. “There are lots of different shapes and textures to help lead your eye through and around the garden,” says Jane. “The textures are quite strong – and they need to be, to match the strong presence of the house.”
A range of flowering perennials – hydrangeas, verbena, agastache, limonium, Shasta daisies, eupatorium ( Eupatorium purpureum ‘Gateway’) and Sedum ‘Iceberg’ – occur throughout, providing seasonal colour in spring and autumn.
But the garden doesn’t rely on these seasonal flourishes for its success. “Even during winter, when the perennials aren’t doing their thing, there are still elements that keep the garden interesting – like the cloud trees, all the clipped spheres and the beautiful lush greens,” says Jane. “It’s a pretty garden and always has something happening. I know it has given the owners a lot of pleasure and they use their outdoor spaces all the time.” Jane Jones Landscapes, Glen Iris, Victoria; jjl.com.au.