Second Nature

Peter and Diane Rich’s Parktown garden is a bold reinvention of a century-old design

- TESS PATERSON

There’s a magical street in Parktown where the steep, rocky ridge commands some of Joburg’s most spectacular views. In the early ’70s, renowned architect Peter Rich and his wife Diane bought a property here – a 1918 cottage with a precipitous terraced garden, its stone walls hewn from the neighbouring quarry. ‘What we bought was an Arts and Crafts spec house,’ explains Rich, ‘and we grafted on a whole new wing.’

Completed in the mid-1980s, the now double-storey space serves as their home as well as housing Rich’s architectural practice. Looking onto the soaring garden – a mass of summer colour topped by an extraordinary stone folly – this has to be one of the coolest working environments in the city.