REVIVAL STORY
A simple and sophisticated garden helped restore the understated glamour of this Melbourne home.
Melbourne couple Lucy and Andy Bowen know a rare gem when they see it. When they bought their 1930s home three years ago it had lost its original lustre, but they knew it would polish up brilliantly as a family home for themselves and their three young sons. Built in the Spanish Revival style, the home’s signature features – white stucco, arches, terracotta – had been tampered with over time. “But we saw the potential to bring it back to life and revitalise the features that were no longer celebrated,” says Lucy. As an architect, Lucy was well placed to oversee the restoration.
The garden, too, was in dire need of repair. For this, the couple turned to their friend, horticulturist and landscape designerAndrewPanton.Theirbrief?“Wewantedthegarden to embrace the heritage architecture of the home, with a nod to Santa Barbara style,” says Lucy. The existing garden was “basic and not redeemable, unfortunately”, says
Andrew. Working with a clean slate, he set about designing the three key spaces – the 18x12-metre front garden, side entrance andrearcourtyard–takingintheSantaBarbara-stylelandscaping references he’d researched with Lucy.
With a focus on creating a “Mediterranean feel”, Andrew devised a “restrained, simple and sophisticated” plant palette featuring softly contrasting textures. There’s also a mix of formal and informal planting. For example, Korean box ( Buxus microphylla var. microphylla) is used extensively as low hedging, creating a sense of formality and containment for the looser, massed plantings of English lavender ( Lavandula angustifolia) and rosemary ( Rosmarinus officinalis ‘Blue Lagoon’).
Along with the box hedging, Andrew used clusters of clippedbox spheres – this time English box ( Buxus sempervirens). “Having the spheres in different shapes and sizes helps to create interest, especially when the rest of the planting is simple and en masse,” he says. To soften the home’s front facade, he planted Chinese star jasmine ( Trachelospermum jasminoides) which now festoons the arches of the portico. At the side of the house, the entry walkway is flanked by Rosemary ‘Blue Lagoon’. “In late spring, when the jasmine, lavender and rosemary all flower, it’s aromatic and beautiful. Just sensational,” says Andrew.
The Bowens wanted the option of off-street parking, so Andrew created a driveway using recycled bricks laid in a herringbone pattern. Then, to break up the brickwork, he designed a large central circular planter in which he installed an advanced olive tree underplanted with more English box. The driveway morphs into an area of white pebbles punctuated with antique terracotta pots planted with blue-toned agaves ( Agave americana).
One existing plant the Bowens loved and wanted to retain was an old espaliered lemon tree in the rear courtyard. It was near its last legs and needed a lot of TLC to bring it back to life, but it survived and is now a stunning feature of that space.
For Lucy and Andy, the new garden completes the home. The exterior and interior spaces now sing together and Lucy is thrilled to see her vision realised: “Andrew really helped refine it with his gorgeous plant selections and sculptural elements.”
“I always like a mix of formal and informal planting in a garden. The plant palette here is deliberately restrained because sometimes less is best.”
Andrew Panton, garden designer