Planning the key to paradise
Diane Airey has used the lessons she has learned from nature to create the beautiful gardens surrounding her Booragoon home.
Drawing on her experience as an artist and landscaper and inspired by native flora, she has created four complementary gardens that provide tranquil outdoor spaces around the home she built with her husband 46 years ago.
“The verge garden is modelled on the lessons of nature in a harsh environment, where layering of planting is the rule,” she said.
A Melaleuca bracteata Revolution Gold tree provides shade for a variety of plants including kangaroo paws, a grass tree, silver-leafed eremophila, grevilleas, scaveola and dwarf banksia which are artfully positioned around bush rocks.
The feature tree in the walled Mediterranean garden is the native weeping cherry (Exocarpos sparteus). It shades a collection of exotic plants, including camellias and azaleas.
A frog pond creates a cooling ambience in the Japanese-inspired central water garden, with informal pools surrounded by granite rocks. Trees include a Kings Park Special bottlebrush and a tea-tree (leptospermum) which has been trimmed to create a gnarled and aged look that supports the Japanese theme.
Water, this time a small swimming pool with a natural rock-spill waterfall, dominates the rear courtyard. The pool was dug by hand and Ms Airey said the splash of the water created “white noise” that drowned out the sounds of activity in neighbouring homes.
The pool is backed by a metre-wide garden bed filled with variegated pittosporum and callistemon shrubs, underplanted with Boston ivy and philodendron.
“The ferocious competition between these plants means that every spare inch of soil is taken up by roots and weeds are non-existent,” Ms Airey said.
She said the garden was very low-maintenance. “Leaves falling into the garden mulch down beautifully and maintenance of this garden is practically zero.
“The reward for careful planning and choosing the right plants is immense, the garden provides habitat for birds and frogs and provides a place of beauty and harmony that we can enjoy year round.”
