The big picture

There are many ways to design a garden, says MICHAEL McCOY, but the measure of its success is the compelling nature of the space

Above all else, what I’ve learnt over many years of gardening, and in particular during my time hosting Dream Gardens on ABC TV, is there’s no one way, or correct way, to go about designing a garden. It seems there’s an almost infinite array of outcomes from any particular brief, site or list of design challenges.

I hope that’s liberating for fellow gardeners to hear. Of course, there’ll be some for whom the breadth of choice is exactly the problem, and who wish that their options were more limited. But for others – and I hope for you – it will be energising to think there’s no entirely right, or entirely wrong, way to go about creating your garden.

Some of the gardens I know and love were designed on paper, down to the last detail, before any work began. Others that I love just as much simply grew, organically, as works began. Some rely heavily on super-current hardscaping materials, and some entirely on plants. Both – done well – can be brilliant. It’s fascinating to me that if you gave the same site over to, say, 20 good designers, you’d end up with 20 entirely different outcomes. No doubt you’d love some more than others, but all could have equal merit in their response to the advantages and challenges presented.

Not so much learnt as reinforced since the first episode of Dream Gardens is the truth that good gardens are fundamentally about really compelling spaces. This is perhaps the trickiest of all the paradigm shifts for home gardeners to make – that the volumes we inhabit when we step into a garden will elicit the strongest of all visceral responses, stronger than any visual feature. The most important thing, therefore, about the shape of garden beds and plantings is the shape and size of the spaces they define.

Most gardeners – not all, surprisingly – want flowers and good foliage, and perhaps some sculpture or lovely structures, but all these must serve the bigger goal of contributing to the solid ‘masses’, which have the critical collective role of forming the voids we inhabit. For me, the perfect combination is heavenly, intimate spaces that are captured and held by rich, detailed planting. You may prefer something more ‘built’, or more restrained, but in either case it’s the spaces, and the way they flow out from the house and from one to another, that are the silent, and largely subconscious, keys to success.

Oh, and I’ve also learnt that being on TV isn’t nearly as fun as I thought it would be. Making TV, on the other hand, is one of the most fun things I’ve ever done!

Michael blogs at thegardenist.com.au