VISION SPLENDID

A secluded bush sanctuary north of Sydney has had a profound impact on the life of landscape designer Richard Unsworth personally and, more recently, professionally, too.

- Chris Pearson

Summer holidays spent in the boathouse of this retreat poised on the edge of Pittwater, NSW, sowed the seeds of a decades-long love affair for landscape designer Richard Unsworth. Evocatively named Trincomalee, it was then owned by the mother of a close friend and, freshly arrived from the UK in the 1990s, he visited every year to soak up the spirit of his adopted country.

“It’s magical,” says Richard, founder of landscape firm Garden Life. “It’s just an hour from Sydney, but because you arrive by boat, you shed your worries as you exhale into the gentleness.” So it’s unsurprising that Richard, his friend Justine and their respective partners, Greg and Scott, pooled their resources and bought the 1890s homestead with its rambling, untamed garden when it went on the market in 2016. “When the ‘for sale’ sign went up, I couldn’t bear the thought of never going back there,” says Richard.

FEATURE PLANTS

NATIVES

Banksia spp. (B. serrata, B. integrifolia, B. ericifolia, B. robur and B. banksia) Wattle spp. (Acacia longifolia, A. fimbriata)

Black she-oak (Allocasuarina littoralis)

Sydney red gum (Angophora costata)

Lemon-scented tea tree (Leptospermum petersonii) SHRUBS

Grass trees (Xanthorrhoea latifolia, X. glauca)