After knocking down their home to build a contemporary property, Bec and Marty plan to revive their tired old garden to complement the house.
They long for a country style garden that will envelop and nestle the home into the surrounding bushland. With teenage children at home, socialising is at the forefront of their plans and there is plenty of space to include a firepit and entertaining area with views across rolling hills.
The steeply sloping block will require a clever garden design to establish an enclosed sense of intimacy while still amplifying the view beyond.
Landscape designer, Peta Donaldson, will take on this challenge, with a plan to transform the property to subtly mirror its surrounds. With a constant threat of bushfires in the region, Peta is alarmed by the plants currently residing on the property, particularly the thirty highly flammable pine trees at the front. Her replacement plant choices will be limited to those that mitigate the risks.
Fire retardant gardens are commonplace around Australia, but their functionality is not always synonymous with beauty.
Michael travels across the country to Yallingup in Western Australia to find a garden that ticks both boxes. With no gardening experience, owners Bill and Di Mitchell set out to manage an extreme fire risk in their area but created so much more. Appropriately named ‘Fire and Beauty’, the garden produces a thirty-metre fire blanket using mass planted succulents and cacti.
But it’s the way this garden’s boundary disappears into the spectacular borrowed landscape that make it so awe-inspiring. With Bec and Marty facing a similar, inconvenient reality, can they also succeed in finding that sweet spot for a garden that is both practical and pleasing to the eye?
Production credits: Supervising Executive Producer, Frances O’Riordan. Executive Producer, Jane Rowley, Series Producer, Leisa Pratt.
