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This big garden in northern Sydney has been developed by Julie Cartledge, a good plantswoman who also has a great sense of ‘grand design’. It’s not easy to work out how to transform former open paddocks into a large scale garden. Dividing up the open area has to be handled carefully so there is still a sense of grandeur, but also smaller, people-scaled spaces.
What big gardens can do really well is use vistas to entice you to move along their broad paths and use perspective tricks to shorten or broaden the view. Focal points have to be large enough to be seen at maybe at a hundred metres (300ft) distance, but not feel overly dominant when you’re right near them. Structures need to maintain the grand scale – if you’re going to build an arbour, it needs substantial columns, and cross beams and Julie has used double columns to good effect.
Repetition of plants is a key feature – in this garden standard roses, crisp box edging and topiary shrubs and well-shaped conifers are both grouped and dotted around the garden.
A big garden also needs to have a change of pace and mood. Behind the large arbour and dam, there’s suddenly vegetable gardens and then an informal mixed native and exotic garden. To one side in a sheltered courtyard, Julie’s collection of fuchsias reigns supreme and there’s a strong contrast with the open spaces, with an enclosing roof, and hanging baskets and shrubs filling the beds.
Click on any photo to see a larger image slideshow. You can also click photos in the slideshow (top right corner) to see a full-size version.
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Wacko what a garden this is i would love to have some flat land like this to work with.
All we have is slope slope, i guess it keeps you thinking.
That arbour is to die for, i can see why you left that as your last pic just super.
Keep goin G.