Seeds of inspiration: Beautifully unique gardens across Australia
Photographer Claire Takacs travels far and wide to find beautifully unique gardens, captured in her book Dreamscapes.
Cloudehill
Olinda, Victoria
Cloudehill, the garden of Jeremy and Valerie Francis, is one that is very close to my heart. It was the first garden I ever photographed in 2006 and it became the inspiration for my career. I’d already been experimenting with landscape photography, my initial love, and had started getting up at dawn to see the natural world cast in a different light.
One of my projects while I was studying photography brought me to Cloudehill. When walking around the garden for the first time, I was immediately struck by its beauty.
Previously I had only seen such gardens in England, so it was a surprise to find this 10 minutes from where I’d grown up. I was also struck by the ephemeral nature of this beauty and an almost urgent sense that no one was here capturing it. So, I met and chatted with Jeremy, creator of this magnificent garden, and organised to come back and photograph it.
The next morning, after having jumped the fence at 5am, it was a revelation to me to be lost in the beauty of this garden, then to observe the light as it gradually came through and illuminated its different parts. My eyes went to wherever the light was and I started to appreciate the garden’s many colours, textures, layers and design elements.
I was incredibly inspired and compelled to capture and record all I saw. My love of light seemed to facilitate both seeing and capturing the beauty of the garden and it’s been the key element that has guided my work ever since.
Jeremy and Valerie initially lived on a wheat and sheep farm in hot, dry Western Australia. During regular trips to England, Valerie’s homeland, Jeremy became inspired by the plants and gardens he saw there, particularly the Arts and Crafts masterpieces, such as Sissinghurst and Hidcote, and the works of Gertrude Jekyll.
It was during this time he realised the effect a garden could have on someone. He vividly describes how he was affected by the element of “expectation and surprise” – a phrase coined by Long Barn’s Harold Nicolson – particularly the experience of Hidcote, with its cross axis opening that reveals a staggering view of the surrounding countryside. Jeremy has gone on to use it to great effect in Cloudehill’s many garden rooms.
In 1988, Jeremy began collecting his wishlist of perennials, unavailable in Australia, from a number of influential English nurseries and plantspeople, including Christopher Lloyd and Beth Chatto. Of the 140 perennials he brought back with him, 120 were eventually released after passing quarantine.
A change of direction a few years later provided an opportunity to seek out a more suitable environment to grow the cool-climate perennials to which he was drawn, and experiment with garden design. David Glenn from Lambley, who had been given some of the initial collection, suggested the Dandenongs, an hour from Melbourne, as the ideal place. In 1991, after years of searching, he found Cloudehill, a former nursery and flower farm owned by Jim Woolrich.
The inspiration provided by this internationally influenced garden really was the beginning for me and set me on a road I’m still travelling –one that takes me around the globe seeking and sharing beauty and inspiration in the world’s gardens. It’s been an incredible focus for my life and has brought about so many connections to wonderful people in the gardening world.
Cloudehill connected me to Australian writer Christine Reid, and subsequently became my first of many features in Gardens Illustrated, which has also been central to my work.
In the intervening years, I’ve returned to Cloudehill many times and become friends with Jeremy. It’s always nice to see the garden’s development, and the seasonal changes are stunning. The perennial borders are at their best in late summer, when the colours and textures lead the eye to a view of a eucalypt stand in the distance.
In winter, you can really appreciate the structure of the garden and its many rooms, while in spring, the garden comes alive with meadows of bluebells.
Stonefields
Daylesford, Victoria
Photo: Claire Takacs
Paul Bangay is one of Australia’s most high-profile garden designers and for more than 25 years has been creating gardens for prominent figures in business and culture, both in Australia and internationally. He is celebrated for his elegant approach, creating gardens of classic simplicity and symmetry, particularly with the use of hedging and topiary often in the form of Buxus sempervirens spheres and cubes.
Stonefields is Paul’s home garden, near Daylesford in Victoria. I loved visiting this garden for the first time, with the challenge of photographing it for Gardens Illustrated. I captured many of the more obvious views that I’d seen of this much-photographed garden, but particularly loved a new view I hadn’t seen of Paul’s Red Garden.
My image was taken from a ladder at sunset, where I could see the distant eucalyptus forest. When I took the photograph, it was a profusion of roses and clouds of cow parsley set against clipped box spheres.
Photo: Claire Takacs
On entry, there’s a strong linear aspect to the garden, with stepped terraces leading down to the farmhouse. A rill – a narrow channel that carries water – leads the eye down the terraces and to the house. One of the garden rooms, the White Garden, was inspired by Vita Sackville-West’s English garden at Sissinghurst and has beds of white roses and irises, a central pool covered with waterlilies and a backdrop of pleached hornbeams.
Taking photographs of country gardens is generally my preference. I was originally inspired by landscape photography, and I love to show the connection between the garden and the wider landscape. My favourite gardens are those that transition to their surrounds subtly and with no distinct edges between garden and greater landscape.
Utilising the soft light at sunrise or sunset often enhances big landscape views. There was only a brief moment on the morning I visited with beautiful soft light, and I used it to capture Paul’s long pool surrounded by lawn. This reflective pool leads the eye straight out to the surrounding landscape so simply and beautifully.
I also enjoyed seeing his use of perennials, which has become freer and more naturalistic in style, in contrast to the clipped forms. This is a hugely ambitious and beautiful garden created in the relatively short timeframe of about 10 years. It’s an oasis carved from the surrounding bare paddocks and a testament to Paul’s talent.
This is an edited extract from Dreamscapes by Claire Takacs, published by Hardie Grant Books, $70. Available in stores nationally and The Store by Fairfax.