COMPANION PLANTING

As this garden took shape, so too a strong friendship grew between the property’s keen-to-learn owner and the landscape designer she entrusted with it.

- Elizabeth Wilson

Kaye Strain loves pottering in her garden, secateurs in hand. “I’m having so much fun,” she says. “I’m so happy I discovered gardening.” She’s serious about her new-found passion, a pursuit inspired by the recent revamp of her garden by Richard Unsworth, director of plant emporium Garden Life.

The garden is on a rocky, sloping site at Palm Beach, on the northern-most tip of Sydney’s Northern Beaches peninsula. Perched on a hillside, with views of the Pacific Ocean, the property is south-east facing with poor sandy soils, exposure to southerly winds and a 10-metre incline from the street to the front door. Not ideal conditions for garden-making, but despite that – or thanks to it – Richard has created a textured, thriving wonderland that sits seamlessly in the landscape.

Kaye bought the property in 1993, drawn by the water views and the original 1950s-era weatherboard home nestled into the bush. Early on, she enlisted a local stonemason who terraced the garden, using bush rock from the site. She then engaged designer Annie Wilkes, who filled the terraces with a plumbago, agapanthus, olives and pencil pines. It was a low maintenance, non-gardener’s garden that suited Kaye perfectly at the time, as she was working long hours in a demanding job.