Down a leafy street in Melbourne’s inner southeast, the heritage facade of this Edwardian home conceals an unassuming contemporary extension.
Beyond the original brick walls at street view, a sun-drenched new addition meets a lush, playful garden — and various atrium spaces filled with greenery — by garden design studio Plume.
‘It’s an unstructured garden within a structured piece of architecture,’ Plume Studio director Heath Blair explains. ‘We set out to create a whimsical garden that provides a softness where garden and house intersect.’
When Heath and his team took on the project, the back yard was a complete ‘mud pit’ as the house was still in the early stages of building works. But over time, working carefully alongside the architect and builder, they were able to transform the space into a flourishing landscape that contrasts the clean lines, muted tones and luxe finishes of the interiors.
Bright, colourful accents including pops of pinks and reds are scattered throughout thanks to plantings such as anemone japonica (Japanese thimbleweed), hylotelephium spectabile (Autumn joy), and acer palmatum (Japanese maple).
These bold hues are distinctive when viewed against the sandblasted limestone that meanders through the garden — but they also help to enhance the pale blush tones of the delicate dahlia cafe au lait flowers, which catch your line of sight looking out to the swimming pool.
As the landscape area wasn’t huge in size, Heath says that augmenting the planting so that it could be viewed from inside helped to make it a more tangible experience from within the residence.
‘This helps to blur the depth of the garden and make the solid structures feel less significant,’ he adds.
The architecture also yielded small atriums which allowed for more greenery surrounding the home, but in turn provided a challenge for Heath: adhering to different microclimates and conditions while creating a consistent design language across the site.
‘Through scale, colour and texture, we were able to bind the spaces together to feel unified,’ he says.
The unique palette of plants ensured the client’s brief of creating a playful landscape full of colour, texture and seasonality was met with ease. But, Heath says, it couldn’t have been done without incredible local resources such as Diggers, Antique Perennials and Silt Flower Farm.
