Wattle Glen Open Garden

Landscape designer Sam Cox’s beautiful bushland home garden in Wattle Glen will open for the last weekend in spring. Mentored by pioneering Australian landscape designer Gordon Ford, Sam’s garden is created in the Australian natural style.

Set on about 1.5 acres, Sam and his wife Lisa Hatfield bought the property nearly 25 years ago, when it was simply grassy paddocks with a few remnant Red Box and Yellow Gums. From the beginning, Sam’s vision was to create a bushland haven reflecting the enduring, understated beauty of a naturalistic bush garden with landscaping based on carefully honed techniques of rock placement, earth shaping, and layered native plantings.

These guiding principles embody Sam’s dedication to the naturalistic style of landscape design, which he learned while working closely for three and a half years with his mentor and employer, Gordon Ford. Trained in the early 1950s by the father of Australian bush garden design, Ellis Stones, Ford was at the forefront of the Australian natural style of gardening for over five decades. Sam Cox was Ford’s last apprentice.

Q&A with Sam Cox at 11AM and 2.30PM on both days.

Wattle Glen Garden is located on the lands of the Wurundjeri people. Open Gardens Victoria wish to acknowledge the Traditional custodians of this land and we pay respect to their Elders, past, present and emerging.