Picture Perfect

A garden of many rooms is inspired by a long-standing romance with formalism and love of the natural world

- Heidi Bertish

The sun was just beginning to sink beneath the horizon when I first visited the Brody family garden at Spook Hill, on the south-western slopes of the Helderberg mountains. It was one of those magical summer days in the Cape. The warm light at the end of the day highlighted the cloud-pruned hedges and velvety palette of perennials. Freshly mown avenues were being soaked a deep, glossy green. As I walked across the lawn with my camera, low light snuck through the overhead Rosewood canopies and scattered leafy patterns onto the grass.

‘I’ve always had a love affair with gardens – particularly formal gardens,’ says owner and gardener Larisa Brody. ‘On one of my first trips abroad, I visited the gardens of Sanssouci in Potsdam, Germany and fell in love with hedges and classical formality,’ she says. Years later, after being introduced to the work of Australian landscape designer Paul Bangay, his use of symmetry and architectural simplicity became the inspiration for the formal garden areas immediately surrounding their family home.