The gift that keeps on giving

By taking cuttings and dividing existing plants and those from friends, Anne Turner and her son David have created a stunning garden that takes on a whole new personality as the seasons change.

I was always a roses and lavender type of gardener,” says Anne Turner. So, when she and her family left their small, suburban home with its manicured garden and moved to a semi-wild, 1ha property, her first reaction was: “What have we done?”.

The previous owner loved the bush and had planted a number of beautiful indigenous trees and shrubs, but when the Turners arrived the garden was extremely overgrown.

“You couldn’t see the roof in some places and the only section of the house that was visible was the entrance,” says Anne. “For the first 18 months, we didn’t really do any gardening. We just cut back and cleared and dug out roots of invasive plants until we had some idea of what we were dealing with.”

During the clearing out, they discovered gems like the sausage tree (Kigelia africana) which normally doesn’t grow in cold areas like this. A coral tree (Erythrina lysistemon) was uncovered and moved to a more prominent position and further cutting back revealed a couple of yellowwoods.

“We didn’t remove any trees, but we did plant three fever trees (Vachellia xanthophloea) on the far side of the swimming pool to draw the eye and because I love the texture and colour of the bark,” says Anne. “We were also blessed with a number of different aloes, mainly Aloe arborescens, one tree aloe, and some creeping Aloe marlothii from which we propagated most of the aloes in the garden.”