Complete Picture

Recognising the potential in an undeveloped garden scored Sydney landscape designer Nicola Cameron her dream family home.

- Elizabeth Wilson

Savvy homebuyers are familiar with the adage about buying ‘the worst house in the best street’. The same wisdom can apply to homes with untamed gardens, says landscape designer Nicola Cameron, founder of Pepo Botanic Design.

“Seeing and realising the potential of your outdoor space will increase the size of your living area, and add value to your home for years to come,” Nicola says. She’s speaking from firsthand experience.

In 2013, Nicola and her husband James were hunting for a new home for themselves and their children Mimi, now 14, and Archie, 13. Among the homes on their hit list was one Nicola describes as being “in the perfect location, with the worst garden”, in the beachside Sydney suburb of Maroubra. It was on a steeply sloping site and the garden consisted of patchy lawn, scrubby plants and an old in-ground pool. On that initial inspection Nicola couldn’t stomach the challenge of it. “I politely handed the flyer back to the agent as I walked out the door and told him it was too hard,” says Nicola.

But the following week, when she was working on a design for a client whose garden presented its own challenges, she felt a pang: “I thought to myself, ‘if she can see the potential with this place why can’t I do the same?’ ”. With renewed resolve – and pen and paper in hand – Nicola returned to the Maroubra house with her landscaper hat on, and began sketching.

“It had myriad problems,” she says, “There were no functional spaces, everything was dated and there was no connection between inside and out.”