BEST IN SHOW
HOW A HORSE LOVER’S DREAM PROPERTY HELPED HER FIND A TALENT FOR GARDENING.
Horse lover Meaghan Willis has created a garden oasis in Newham, Victoria, that combines her preference for formal layouts with all things equestrian.
AS AN ACCOMPLISHED dressage rider who has competed at the elite Grand Prix level, it’s no surprise to find Meaghan Willis’s property at Newham, overlooking Hanging Rock in the Macedon Ranges, is superbly set up for her equestrian pursuits. From the high dry-stone wall at the entrance, the poplar-lined drive climbs past horse paddocks neatly fenced in dark stained timber rails and then skirts the house and a verdant garden to the magnificent stable complex at the rear. Here, the Dutch-style stables with barn doors opening either end, and a high roofline rising over the airy central aisle, are lit by large hanging lanterns. Meaghan has spared nothing on herringbone paving and the smart black tiled wash bays. The four horse boxes have shuttered openings for her pair of warmbloods, Harry and Romeo, to have fresh air and picturesque views. Nearby, the arena where she trains and exercises the horses is bordered in box hedging and lavender. Riding here in the dress circle of Hanging Rock, with spectacular views all around, is Meaghan’s greatest joy. Meaghan grew up on her parents’ farm in nearby Gisborne, and for most of her adult life she dreamt of living close to her horses. “I wanted to have my horses at home with me, to keep an eye on them,” says Meaghan, who was coached by Australian Olympic dressage rider Mary Hanna. “I used to look at stables and horse properties in books, and say to myself, ‘One day…’” Professionally, Meaghan trained as an intensive care nurse and now works in healthcare IT, but earlier in her career she worked for an insurance company. “I travelled the world repatriating patients back to Australia, and when I was overseas I would always look at stables, getting ideas.” Jimsbury Park, as she named the two-hectare property after the nearby Jim Jim mountain elevation, is her dream come true. She was looking for land when she saw the property and single-storey home while driving past one day in 2009. As soon as she saw the wonderful views, she was sold. It’s now home to her beloved 18-year-old Harry, also known as Roxbury Armistice, whom Meaghan purchased as a week-old foal, and the up-and-coming three-year-old, Romeo. When Meaghan bought the property she hardly anticipated that in laying out the perfect equestrian property she would also become, over time, an accomplished gardener. She has masterfully integrated the garden plan with the surrounding buildings and structures. “I don’t consider myself a gardener, but I learnt a lot from Mum, and I love to garden,” says Meaghan. “The Jim Jim is an old volcano and the soil is good here — you just plant things and they grow.” It helped that she already had a clear idea of what she wanted to achieve as she started creating this tranquil oasis and stunning, highly structured, textural garden. “I like formality, clean lines and green on green, and wanted something reasonably low maintenance. So I put in a lot of hedges and a lot of lawn, and where there is any colour it is mostly white.” Practicality was a priority and, knowing horses and their predilection for foraging, she carefully >
considered the planting close to the paddocks. “I’ve planted trees that don’t hang over the fence line, like the poplars and the ‘Capital’ variety of ornamental pears.” Apart from a few existing struggling trees, including birches and maples, that had suffered in the preceding drought, and clumps of agapanthus, she started with a fairly blank canvas. “The trees were on the verge of death, so I dug deep holes around the base of all them, fertilised with Seasol [liquid seaweed] and put heaps of water in — and they revived,” says Meaghan. “Most importantly, I then put a bore in, otherwise I’d never keep everything green.” One of the first plantings were the poplars up the drive. “I bought them as sticks, and the man I bought them from said to cut a third off the tops when I planted them. So then I put the tips in soil as well, and they grew too.” The rear garden area was enclosed with a plastic trellis, which Meaghan didn’t like but was keen to retain as an area for the dogs, Mini Moo, a bichon Maltese cross, Gizmo, and her new Cairn terrier puppy, Teddy. “I didn’t want to pull it down because it was dog-proof,” she says. Instead, she planted maidenhair creeper underneath, which has become a dense clipped hedge completely obscuring the trellis. On the inner garden side there’s a row of claret ash, birch and alder trees and Japanese maples transplanted from another spot, underplanted with banks of white-flowering oakleaf hydrangea and box hedging. The swathe of velvet lawn flowing out from the house has a circular feature, a clipped box parterre and a pin oak with Canary Island ivy encircling its feet. “I have white tulips popping up through the ivy in spring,” says Meaghan. The circle motif is repeated in front of the house and also in front of the stables, where the driveway swings around a now-thriving linden tree (also transplanted from another part of the garden) and an outer segmented ring of beds planted with white-flowering Rosa rugosa ‘Alba’ and box hedging. Meaghan says that the latter was designed by her friend and owner of Cloverdel garden at Woodend, Annabel Buxton: “Annabel designed this bed and the round bed at the front of the house, and has guided me with the garden.” Meaghan has given the house a face lift too and in doing so had an iron arbour built over the back terrace, which is now covered in ornamental grapevine. “I have lots of dinner parties out here,” she says. Meaghan also grows most of her own vegetables. “I fertilise the garden beds with mushroom mulch and have irrigation, which has made a big difference. I’ve learnt a lot of things along the way.” While the Macedon Ranges has always been her home, Jimsbury Park has really turned out to be the place of Meaghan’s dreams. “I can sit in my office and see the horses. All seasons are beautiful here; there’s autumn colour and when it snows, it’s gorgeous. And some days when I’m riding the sun sets on the Rock like a tunnel of light. It’s idyllic.”