Embrace the Wild–Inner-Suburban Melbourne Garden
This inner-suburban property is surrounded by neighbours including this WOWOWA-designed home.
A garden in inner-suburban Melbourne shows the beauty of the Australian landscape and the fruits of a free-flowing creative process.
When it was time to photograph this garden, landscape designer Sam Cox didn’t style a thing – and didn’t want to. “It’s a bit wild, it’s a bit knocked around, and it’s lived in, if you look closely,” he explains during my visit on an autumn day. “And that, to me, is the most important thing … what people doin this garden. It’s [about] how it feels and what it gives back.” Sam Cox has made his name for Australian natural-style gardens that are designed to be lived in. Drawing on principles imparted from his time spent working with prominent Australian landscape designer Gordon Ford, Sam’s gardens celebrate what’s native and local using a playbook of texture, colour and tone.
This garden is located in the Melbourne suburb of Fitzroy North, on the land of the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung people. It’s a suburban block with all the trimmings: plenty of neighbours and close to a shopping strip. The mission was to bring some quintessentially Australian wildness to this utterly urban place, while meeting the everyday needs of a family. Doing both called for a free-flowing creative process that both designer and clients welcomed. “A lot of our work is very organic in our approach,” Sam shares. “We wouldn’t have[had] a formal brief, it would’ve been a chat and a design wasn’t drawn for this.”
It follows, then, that an existing persimmon tree and smokebush were kept. A grassy area became a soccer pitch and more recently, an area for growing produce in planter boxes for a school project. A she oak that somehow snuck in while the garden was being developed started to grow and was left to doits thing. Around the front, a 100-year-old olive tree popular with local nonnas was retained and worked into the redesign.
What has been intentionally added unfolds in masterful layers of green. Upon arrival to the backyard, a canopy of Wallangara white gum (Eucalyptus scoparia), draws the eye skywards. The path bordered by correas invites you to the seating area and beyond, the fence line is softened by Dodonia viscosa, Correabaeuerlenii, Bursaria spinosaand a couple of callistemons. “We’re not a flowers-based design crew,” Sam reflects. “It’s about foliage, about contrast and about green on green.”
The renovated house by Nest Architects works in perfect harmony with the garden. Huge pivot windows marry the two realm sand a bench seat running the length of one must certainly be a favourite spot for repose for the family. “Most of these landscapes at some point in the day will give you a moment. I’m always trying to catch those moments,” Sam muses. “We’re building experiences for people.”
The house also reveals a vista of a courtyard around the side of the property, an opportunity for Sam and team to add more greenery. Here, a thicket of bamboo along the back edge gives the overlooking bedroom a lush view, complete with chef’s-hat correa (Correa baeuerlenii) and lemon-scented tea-tree. “It’s to have that sense that you’re outside while you’re inside,” Sam adds.
Aside from the lessons of mentors – and with reverence for the knowledge of Traditional Owners – Sam finds inspiration for landscapes while out hiking in the bush. “I’m 25 years in now, and I still enjoy it most days,” he shares. “I’ve always worked with people older than me, until the last five or 10 years. Now I’m seeing another generation of people [who] are buying houses and wanting to build an environment to live in. And I see more and more that they want to connect to the natural environment and to what this land is.” A reminder that this earth offers us more than words can ever explain.
