NATURAL WONDER

An inspired garden provides the ideal link between a sleek new home and its rugged coastal setting.

- Chris Pearson

Natives, including an existing Metrosideros species hedge, form a borrowed backdrop for the garden. Meanwhile a Chilean myrtle (Luma apiculata) stands sentry in a pot from Kellock Trading at the front door. While an exotic, it is perfectly attuned to the harsh coastal conditions and makes a strong sculptural statement.

The spectacular architecture by Lachlan Shepherd Architects, with its timber battens and off-form concrete, is the perfect complement to this “rugged yet polished” garden. With its larger foliage, a fiddle-leaf fig (Ficus lyrata) inside the house echoes the tractor seat plant (Ligularia reniformis) in the bed below. 

The Grass Pave permeable driveway by Austral Masonry creates a soft and alluring welcome, highlighted by the off-form concrete retaining wall and bluestone pavers. Tractor seat (Ligularia reniformis) offsets the Chilean myrtle (Luma apiculata) in the pot, while native violet (Viola hederacea) forms a dense carpet underfoot. Hardy silver jade plant (Crassula arborescens), water gum (Tristaniopsis laurina) and lilly pilly (Syzygium ‘Elite’) also share the front garden.

For their sculptural home in a spectacular, sometimes wild, coastal setting, Emmy and Liam Robertson wanted a suitably head-turning garden that combined “the rugged and the polished”. And Darin Bradbury of Mint Design happily obliged. “You can’t ignore the natural beauty of coastal Victoria,” he says. “And gardens in that environment need to speak to that sense of place and work with it. This garden had to be a bridge between landscape and architecture.”