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‘En plein air’ is the practice of painting outdoors. In fact, the French phrase literally translates to ‘outside.’
When landscape architect Tim Mitchell and exhibitions project manager Lucy Willet first moved into their Lancefield property in 2021, Lucy was working on a show featuring well-known impressionists Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro and Alfred Sisley — who were also famously plein air painters.
The gestural quality, movement, light and beautiful soft colour palettes of the works inspired Tim and Lucy to transform their five acres of bare paddock in the Macedon Ranges into an art piece of their own.
‘It was everything we wanted the garden to be,’ says Lucy. ‘Lots of gentle movement in the plants, with a soft painterly quality… We also wanted the garden to be a reflection of both of us, and this was a nice combination of the arts (me) and landscapes (Tim).’
It was autumn when the couple started work on the garden —the golden leaves that littered the ground providing the perfect material to ‘draw’ with. ‘We started the design by raking them into shapes until we found a layout we were happy with,’ explains Tim.
After hours of manipulating the leaf litter into various patterns, Tim and Lucy landed on a series of meandering garden beds, creating a ‘river of lawn, flowing out to meet the base of the mountain.’
Come winter, they reassessed and edited the shapes, this time with a lawn mower, until they were ‘just right and ready to plant.’
The final design sees the garden laid out into four groupings of plants. First is the herb garden by the backdoor, featuring ‘edible herb species such as thyme, dill and sage.’
Next is the flower garden that extends from the back of the house and is separated into halves. ‘Plants here create a whimsical display of ever-changing colour and movement, and are a mix of climate-compatible exotics and flowering Australian natives,’ Tim says.
Then there’s the wattles, planted as a backdrop to the garden (although they’re not yet visible behind all the tall perennials in the flower garden).
‘As they grow, these plants will provide a link between the colourful foreground of the flower garden by the house and the more muted tones of the Australian bush in the distance,’ says Tim of their budding canvas.
Tim and Lucy are also in the process of building a large vegetable garden, a local ‘plague of rabbits’ notwithstanding.
‘We have found no new plants are safe, even those labelled as “unpalatable to rabbits”’, says Tim.
Frost and storms add further trials. Much like the ‘rabbit-proof’ plants, those labeled ‘frost-tolerant’ are not strong enough to survive — let alone tolerate— the below-freezing temperatures the valley experiences.
‘We’ve learnt that planting in autumn is pointless,’ says Tim. ‘Plants need the longest time possible to establish before facing the winter frosts, so we can only plant in spring.’
Storms have also downed 20 trees and caused many plants to succumb to waterlogging.
But, it takes more than this to dampen Tim and Lucy’s resolve. ‘We’re not precious about plants dying,’ Tim says. ‘We’re constantly propagating new plants in our nursery, so there is always something at hand to fill a gap.’
From the outset, the couple knew they wanted to grow all the plants themselves. Not just for the cost savings, but also to ensure they only use genetically-viable species, rather than sterile cultivators or highly bred hybrid varieties.
‘We wanted the garden to take on a life of its own and to evolve from year to year, without too much input from us,’ says Tim.
This vision has become a reality with no two days ever presenting the same picture.
‘It looks green after rain, withered without it and sometimes glistens with frost,’ Tim says. ‘New birds appear, there is something always in flower and, more importantly, something always about to flower.’
Now, when the sunrise hits the hills and ‘a transcendent gradient of soft pinks and yellows lights the horizon,’ the diverse mix of perennials and natives in similar hues returns the call. Come midday, Tim, Lucy and their little boy Monty are having lunch on the lawn and the dogs are tearing around the flower beds.
It’s just like a scene out of a painting, although, Tim says, ‘we built the garden to live in, not just to look at.’
