A garden designer's stunning bush property | Garden Design and Inspiration | Gardening Australia

Costa sails across the bay to visit the garden of a designer who has been inspired by the natural bush setting and the knowledge of the community volunteers who care for it. Subscribe 🔔 ab.co/GA-subscribe
Richard Unsworth is known for his stunning inner-city garden designs but an hour away from the CBD he has been working on a very different personal project. He has been bringing life back into a century old, one acre garden that has bushland on one side and the glimmering waters of Pittwater on the other. The garden is framed by spotted gums, there’s a huge ancient bunya pine and iconic Sydney sandstone walls.
Richard first visited friends here 25 years ago and was luckily able to purchase it six years ago with his partner and friends. Getting stuck into the garden straight away he says starting off “it was about removal and letting light into the house and to the garden. The garden was a mass of fishbone ferns and pittosporum trees that had started to seed everywhere.” Not long before becoming a custodian of the site he also lost his mother. “Unbeknownst to me my way of gardening here initially was a way of working through that grief, and it was a beautiful comfort being here. In that way it was a very healing process.”
Richard has continually had to find balance on the site, honouring both the previous owners garden additions whilst restoring the land into rich habitat for wildlife and indigenous plants.
Surrounding the house are “exotics and succulents that I know are very resilient, so there’s salvias, Mexican lilies, and euphorbias. They’re giving a bit of that colour and form to a garden that is very naturalistic, and it’s only when we walk away from the house we start to get this transition into natives. The idea is that the bush comes into the garden and the garden flows into the bush quite seamlessly without marking boundaries or barriers.”
In the council-owned reserve next door, local bush regenerator Paul Webb leads a monthly volunteer group that has transformed the area from waist-deep weeds back into a haven for local flora and fauna. Richard joined the crew to learn more about the native ecosystem and support their work by ensuring his garden had less weeds and more natives.
It’s been very successful with a noticeable increase in diversity of grasses, groundcovers, shrubs, invertebrates, and birds. “We’ve just really let the endemic seedbank come back. A lot of native plectranthus is just emerging, it’s been quite wet, so a lot of the sedges and grasses are coming back.” Richard also feels it’s created a better sense of community and feeling at home.
When it comes to lessons for Richard’s work in the city, he says he has a “greater understanding of a more naturalistic style, working with natives, being more patient with outcomes of gardens and in life.”
Featured Plants:
FISHBONE FERN - Nephrolepis cordifolia
(Check before planting: this may be an environmental weed in your area)
SWEET PITTOSPORUM - Pittosporum undulatum
(Check before planting: this may be an environmental weed in your area)
PENCIL MILKBUSH - Euphorbia mauritanica
SALVIA - Salvia leucantha ‘Velour White’
MEXICAN LILY - Beschorneria yuccoides
LANTANA - Lantana camara
(Check before planting: this may be an environmental weed in your area)
BUSH BASIL - Plectranthus parviflorus
KANGAROO VINE - Cissus antarctica
KANGAROO GRASS - Themeda triandra
TWINING GLYCINE - Glycine clandestina
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[@brianquinn5060]

Australian natures paradise. The way we were. So Good.

[@Timmysvegankitchen]

Loved it

[@Syzygyzzz]

❤

[@melusine826]

Money😯

[@SamStone1964]

I visited bush regenerator friends who lived at Lovett Bay in the 1980s. They must have moved away long ago or else I would have expected the area to be close to weed free in the ensuing decades.