Sally Robinson-Kooi began creating Halcyon, her two-acre show garden, when she and her husband moved to the Sydney suburb of West Pennant Hills 10 years ago. After a stint of working and living abroad, they were keen to re-establish roots in Australia — literally — but, having gardened in Holland, they returned home with a taste for a lusher style of planting than Sydney’s climate would naturally suggest.
At roughly the same time that British gardeners were dotting their beds with spiky, drought-defying cordylines, natives of Australia, the Robinson-Koois were racking their brains to find a way of creating a garden that felt more like an English one, yet would require neither daily watering nor teams of hired help. Although both Sally and her husband Simon work, part of the pleasure they take in their garden is clearly the hands-on aspect (Simon did all the hard landscaping himself).
Perhaps it’s a romantic streak that dissuades them from taking the easy option. In their view, succulents in gravel might be low-maintenance, but they don’t succour the soul at the end of a hard day. Anyway, gravel was out of the question on a site that was not only large but also undulating and ringed by a creek, complete with the promise of sighting blue wrens, fire-tailed finches and the occasional kingfisher.
“It was a mess when we came here,” says Sally. “The beds were narrow and unimaginative and, as we quickly discovered, filled with builder’s rubble.” What were thriving, naturally enough, were weeds: privet, castor-oil plant, arrowhead vines and lantana, the last of which might sound rather desirable to British gardeners who know it only as a fragile annual that needs coaxing through the British summer. In its native habitat, however, it’s considered a noxious weed — a hairy, tough-stemmed nasty that can be eradicated only by the most thorough digging out.
The couple’s aim was twofold: to create a relaxing and relaxed-looking blend of foliage and colour — with the emphasis on foliage: flowers were a bonus — and to protect and encourage wildlife by planting more natives and encouraging regeneration along the creek, part of a network of natural waterways in the area that eventually leads to the Parramatta River.
“When we decided to revamp, one of the first requirements was that plants were fairly drought-tolerant,” says Sally. “We weren’t in serious drought conditions then, but Australia’s always been a dry country, so if things didn’t thrive, I whipped them out.” Since then, as in parts of Britain, prolonged drought has become a year-round problem. New South Wales is now suffering its sixth consecutive summer hosepipe ban.
With the water shortage, the Robinson-Koois swapped their garden sprinklers for a network of leaky pipes. Using stored run-off from their house roof, they are thus able to water once a week. Their next project is to install a “grey water” system, piping used water from the house to vulnerable areas of garden.
“I know we could have made life simpler by opting entirely for native plants,” says Sally. “But in Australia, it’s almost become a form of political correctness, and I resisted that. I wasn’t going to get rid of the perfectly healthy gardenias and azaleas that were already in situ, and I didn’t want to live without roses, because I love them. So I thought: why can’t we have both? Tough natives in wilder areas of the garden, to encourage birds and beasts, and non-natives in designated sections, to create the kind of informal harmony we particularly like. I drew the line at annuals. Plants have to earn their keep.”
Their first job was to rid the embryo garden of its straight lines. The narrow beds were broadened, composted and mulched, and two timber pergolas were built to divide the sections and create four rooms, connected by grass paths, broader than one would normally make them, in a bid to repel bush fires.
“There was one year when we had embers landing around the house, so we were scared enough to take advice on creating firebreaks,” says Sally. “The advice was not to have pretty, meandering, narrow paths, but to keep them wide, 8ft or more. That way, if a fire does take hold, it’s much harder for it to spread.”
The slope along the creek, which almost moats the property, was too steep to access, so Simon erected terraces, cut in pathways and built two bridges in timber. More than 500 young trees were planted, including red cedar, cheese trees, callicoma, lomandra and banksias. The mature acacias and giant blue gums with their ghostly pale boughs were regenerated, which helped retain areas of dappled shade (crucial for any interesting planting in a country where the summer sun is merciless).
By late summer, the azaleas and gardenias have subsided to a dark green screen, and the more delicate plumes of a wide variety of salvias come to the fore, creating a lush setting for David Austen roses such as ‘Abraham Darby’, with its fattened shape and old-fashioned scent, and ‘Pat Austen’ in palest peach.
Tangled in among its blooms are the elegant spires of Salvia ‘Purple Majesty’ and the even taller Salvia splendens ‘Van-Houttei’, the deep cerise of which is offset by a mass of delicately cut greenery. Sally also underplants with the feathery Artemisia ‘Powis Castle’ and heliotrope, the mauve blooms of which bear the familiar cherry-pie scent but grow much bigger than we can ever manage in a British summer.
Inevitably, despite her avowal that the Sydney suburbs suffer the odd frost, there are plants in her garden that one badly wants but cannot have. A Chinese witch hazel with intriguing, raggedy, deep-pink blooms like cut ribbon acts as a backdrop for roses. Its main showing is in spring, but it goes on with a delicate smattering of blossom right through summer.
However, the most desirable item of all — and most rampant, which shows how much it likes it there — is the glossy-leaved climber that’s taken over one of the pergolas. Known locally as wonga-wonga vine, properly as Pandorea pandorana, it is indeed a beauteous thing, with its vivid counterpoint of glossy, spear-shaped leaves, sprays of creamy-white, funnel-shaped blooms and fat, bright-green seedpods. And it performs this hat-trick for six months at a stretch.
“It might survive in the south of England,” says Sally, unconvincingly. “I’ve seen it around the Canberra area, where it gets pretty cold. But it’s frost-tender, so it would need to be covered in harsh weather.” Might have guessed.
Halcyon is open today for Australia’s Open Garden Scheme. For further details, visit www.opengarden.org.au
Eucalyptus: Eucalyptus Nurseries, Allt-y-Celyn, Carrog, Corwen, Denbighshire, 01490 430 671, www.eucalyptus.co.uk
