GRAND RESTORATION

How many kinds of sweet flowers grow in an English country garden?

- MELANIE WALKER

Unless you have lots of time to get out into the garden daily, informal, sustainable gardens take centre stage. The emphasis for the modern, busy gardener is to let nature take control. The first step is using native plants, but what do you do if you inherit a well-developed, mature garden that might be a little past its prime?

English country garden style feels like it's part of the fabric of the land. It is timeless, traditional, a style that doesn't follow fashion. In fact, to many, it may seem old-fashioned, but when spending time in it, you come to appreciate the settled, mellow feeling it embodies. This feast for the eyes in Linksfield, Johannesburg, is a carefully planned and thought-out space full of surprise and loveliness. Designer Vic van Eyk took over the garden from his mother in 2012, who had lovingly tended this one-acre garden over the years, which takes the pride of place as an open garden on many occasions.

Says Vic - 'this is a garden I grew up in, with many glorious memories of swinging off the syringa tree. When, however, I bought the property from my parents, it had become overshadowed by the shade of the big trees that had been growing there for years. I have to make the difficult decision to take many of the trees out, which is a very emotional decision you can't take lightly. But this needs to happen unless you're going to be doing serious pruning every season, as you need the light for things to grow under the trees. So as soon as I took the house over, things changed.

"That massive syringa tree had to go, regardless of how iconic it was for us. But if you're not prepared to make those hard decisions, you're not going to have much growing in the garden. However, it wasn't about taking out trees and not replenishing the garden. After all, you can always plant an indigenous, smaller tree to fill the space, and they won't take over the space as much as the really old established exotic varieties do?