Inspiration: New Balance

Overflowing foliage meets formal hedging in this gorgeous melbrourne garden, a study in contrast and layers

- Anna McClelland 

in step

Whoever said a formal garden can’t feature rambling garden beds (opposite), bursting with foliage in every shade of deep green to silvery grey imaginable, hasn’t been to visit Rebecca and Andrew’s picturesque plot in Melbourne’s Bayside. A path of oversized Eco Outdoor limestone pavers in Andorra (left) connects the house with an outdoor room at the end of the garden, running in parallel with English buxus hedging along the pool fence. “We had almost worn a dirt track through the grass from going back and forth,” says Rebecca. Save for a magnolia on one end and a solitary palm up the other, the original yard gave landscape designer Andrew Panton of Andrew Panton Design a blank canvas. “We told Andrew to treat it as his own,” says homeowner Rebecca, who was knee-deep in renovating their Federation-style abode at the time. With the homeowners’ two children having already flown the nest, designer Andrew knew the lawn didn’t need to be purely practical. “I wanted to bring the garden out into the yard, rather than limit it to the perimeter,” he says. Rectangular beds that cut a sharp impression into the lawn are accentuated by edging in Corten steel and mirror the straight lines of the boundary hedge and pool.