TRENDING TROPICAL
Explore an urban oasis with a tropical punch
YOU don’t expect revolutions in a quiet suburban street. But remodelling a ’30s property on Durban’s Berea for 21stcentury urban living also involved Anthony Smith and his wife, Taryn, in a remake of the tropical garden.
Initially, their plan had been to complement slick new architectural detail with sculptural plants such as aloes, “but with high walls all round there was much more shade than we’d realised, so the aloes didn’t flourish,” Anthony says.
Then came the human factor as the couple’s two children, Hayden, 4, and Blake, 7 months, arrived.
Finally, though, Anthony simply couldn’t withstand the call of the tropical.
“I plant what I like and just couldn’t resist purple bougainvillea against the black cladding. It shouts Los Angeles beach bungalow to me, which was the overall look I wanted,” Anthony says.
“I work on the 60/40 principle and plenty of indigenous planting has gone in as well.”
So you’re greeted by a scarlet hibiscus arching over the driveway, visited by sunbirds. Beyond is a hedge of mauve and white indigenous freylinia.
Around the broad front lawn that invites children’s rough and tumble and ball games, Anthony has planted sturdy indigenous trees such as quinine, cabbage tree and wild pear. Floor-to-ceiling windows in bedroom extensions overlook a new side courtyard that’s become a forest glade of staghorns and bromeliads.
But the pièce de résistance is the tropical punch of the rear entertainment area. Crazy paving and decking echo the sharp lines of the house, as well as being more child-proof than a muddy, well-worn lawn. A garden room is hung with a massive staghorn “chandelier”.
The problematic shady feature wall behind the pool now capitalises on its shade as a lush vertical garden, the heart of the Smiths’ homage to tropical flavour. Anchored by saplings of wild cherry and wild pear, it’s a calm but intriguing patchwork of textures, shapes, sizes and shades of green leaves — think wild banana, tree fern, strelitzia, staghorn, elephant ear, with air plants, bromeliads and ferns. In a sunnier spot, cordyline adds variegated leaf colour and repeats the structural planting.
Putting his magpie merchandiser’s eye to good use, Anthony has mixed retro garden furniture with the urban-industrial look of a wire shop fitting.
An array of pot plants, from bromeliads to air plants, tumbles out of this and nearby an Aloe barberae basks in the sun. Its sculptural qualities are offset by a Ficus benjamina in a topiary ’do Anthony first spotted in LA.
“For us it’s a work in progress. More of an evolution than a revolution!” Anthony grins as he sips his cooldrink in the shade of the lofty palms and pawpaw trees on the neighbours’ plots.
They lend a borrowed view complete with visiting monkeys, all part of the passing parade for the Smiths to enjoy in their urban oasis.