SPRING FEVER

An older garden in Morningside Manor gets a new lease on life

- MELANIE WALKER

The days are getting incrementally longer, the temperatures warmer, and all around us, new life is emerging from its winter slumber. The soothing soundscapes of the spring garden are upon us, and the burst of bright colours are about to amaze our eyes. It's time to revive that loving feeling you had towards your garden when you first started it.

Self-taught Designer Karen Gardelli grew up with parents who were avid gardeners, a family who didn't go on holiday, rather spending it working in their acre garden. 'My favourite memories are of that garden, with its five-metre-deep beds, filled with hollyhocks and larkspurs, poppies, violas and pansies, of seed collecting with Granny - a truly romantic vision which was the norm back then.

And this is the vision Karen has kept and instilled into the many gardens she has created for clients over the years. Gardens full of colour as is this one. Once an overgrown, underloved garden in Johannesburg North, thanks to Karen's romantic, unwavering spirit, this undulating, half-acre sloping space has been given a make-over over the last 18 years that should last a lifetime.