Garden SECRETS

Richard Christiansen's Flamingo Estate has given Los Angeles a new appreciation of farm-inspired bath, body and pantry produce. Now the Australian is giving gardening advice that's actually about harvesting more joy from life.

- Sally Hunwick

At first people refuse to believe that a strange new thing can be done. Then they begin to hope it can be done. Then they see it can be done – then it is done and all the world wonders why it was not done centuries ago.” When Frances Hodgson Burnett penned The Secret Garden in 1911, she could well have been writing about Californian wholeness brand Flamingo Estate, created by Richard Christiansen at his mystical hilltop home in Los Angeles.

Christiansen, an Australian country boy turned LA darling, was in Sydney in November to talk about his new book, Flamingo Estate: the Guide to Becoming Alive. It’s a visual feast of the heavenly three-hectare lot he shares with partner Aaron Harvey and two dogs. The book depicts a paradise of gardens, orchards, Spanish architecture, blush tones, beehives and serene bathtubs, coupled with stories from Christiansen’s “friends and heroes” that are as much about life lessons as they are about the garden estate.

“All the lessons in this book are from the garden,” says Christiansen, who grew up on a sugarcane farm at Duranbah, New South Wales. “The garden is such a huge teacher for business, for life, for love and for everything. And you know, there’s such a simplicity to that. Just keep going, keep growing in your own way.”

Each chapter in the book features a conversation between Christiansen and one other person. “Some of them are good friends, some of them are people who are fans of the brand,” says Christiansen. They include Martha Stewart, Jane Goodall, Ellen Degeneres, Jane Fonda, Mecca’s Jo Horgan, David de Rothschild, Chrissy Teigen and John Legend.