Open Minded

On a challenging site in central Victoria, this garden has been strengthened by thoughtful plantings and an outward-looking design that draws in big skies and the riverside location. 

- Christine Reid

Fortunate is the gardener whose plot is blessed with layers of interesting, eye-catching elements that extend beyond its own confines. Opening up to this borrowed landscape and its various features – whether naturally formed or manmade – can extend the scope of a garden and hugely influence its atmosphere.

This is the case at Foss, a strongly axial garden surrounding a 120-year-old stone house near Kyneton in central Victoria. The property sits at the centre of a peninsula around which curves a bend of the magnificent Campaspe River. The slow-moving water is lined with age-old river red gums and this majestic landscape assumes great importance as the garden’s backdrop.