Confessions of a Garden Designer

By Joy Froebel

As a garden designer and a lover of all things horticultural, I am as enamored of beautiful gardens as other keen gardeners.

We trek along to Open Gardens, beautiful public gardens and stunning private gardens. We read all the gardening magazines and dream over gorgeous garden books and we are incredibly pleased with ourselves when we find a rare garden plant or grow something that our fellow gardeners are impressed with!

My own garden is a constant work in progress, growing and changing as I get older and discover different ways to deal with climate and water. I have lots of lovely plants, especially perennials (salvias!), orchids, cerastigmias, stephanotis, dendrobiums, pink Angel's Trumpets, cycads, ferns, liriope, clivias, maples, birches, my lovely jacaranda and gleditisia, box, mondo and much more. It has become my haven and I love the little moments I get between school and kinder pick-ups, work at BAAG, garden consultancies and all the other 'Mum' stuff to potter in the plot.

But I do confess, I have always had a secret admiration for the 'quirky' gardener.

When I was a teenager, my grandparents had a house in Wendouree in Ballarat. Down the road from their house was a quaint but memorable garden. In an average sized front garden the owners had set up their own little piece of paradise. Not everyone's 'cup of tea' but this is how it goes!

The whole front garden was covered in white quartz chips, even down the middle of the driveway. The front fence was somewhat nautical looking with painted white chains between the white timber posts. There was a small timber bridge in the middle of the garden that was entered and exited by some round concrete pavers. Next to the bridge were these incredible swans painted white, made from recycled car tyres (where have the tyre swans all gone?). The highlight of the garden was about 20 concrete painted gnomes dotted around the garden amongst succulents and cactus that would now be super trendy!

There is a garden in my street now that has all these tidy, unusual, pruned conifers. The dedication to this is impressive as is the house that has for years maintained their house number in diosma and kept some photinia absolutely immaculate.

There are many of these quirky and unique gardens all over Melbourne and Victoria. Maybe it's the plants, maybe the fence or the letterbox or some homegrown sculpture or water feature that is like no other. I would love any photos or addresses of 'quirkies' to add to my list and hopefully in the near future write a book dedicated to the unsung heroes who love their unique gardens just because it is theirs!

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