Shared vision

Slender grasses swaying in the breeze, cloud-like shrubs in a spectrum of greys and greens, delicate flowers of mauve, pink and orange, and a serpentine path for easy navigation. These are some of the sights that await Rhonda Watson each morning when she steps into her prairie-like garden in Trentham, north-west of Melbourne, on Djadjawurrung and Wurundjeri Country.

“It’s just beautiful; I pinch myself all the time,” Rhonda says. “There’s always something to look at, and something happening in the garden.”

 This is first and foremost a family environment, made to be shared with loved ones. On the day of our chat, Rhonda has four young grandchildren visiting for the day, making good use of the naturalistic wonderland on their doorstep. “They run around with a magnifying glass and find little plants to pick and put in a vase,” says the proud grandmother. “There are plenty of spots for hide-and-seek, too.

 Despite its wild, timeworn appearance, this garden is a youthful four years old. It was designed to complement a new home built for Rhonda in 2019 by her son-in-law Will Wapling, a local builder and carpenter. “Will and my daughter Stephanie owned a house here with a block of land attached,” says Rhonda, who runs The Green Store in Trentham, a shop selling sustainable products. “They decided to subdivide, and I said, ‘Well, why don’t I buy it?’”

 As the house was under construction, Rhonda asked landscape designer Tim Pilgrim to re-imagine the “empty paddock” of a garden. “I wanted tall grasses and some trees to give it structure and height, as well as a compost and raised beds at the back. But otherwise, I left Tim to it.”  

The contemporary-style house spans the length of the 37m x 20m block, with the garden running alongside it, on the sunny northern position. “With such a narrow space, it was important to create not only height but depth, so we used the shape of the path to create deeper pockets for planting, repeating plants at various points to draw you in,” Tim says.

 About 70 per cent of the plantings are grasses and herbaceous perennials – from cloud-pruned bush germander to velvety lamb’s-ear and sturdy Achillea ‘Walther Funcke’, alongside some of Rhonda’s favourites: purpletop vervain, Japanese silver grass, beeblossom and butterfly bush. Advanced dogwood and weeping pear trees provide height, while common box, pruned into topiary balls, lend a touch of formality.

 “The cool, wet climate of this area gave us a broad range of plants to choose from, but we did need to avoid plants that are easily upset by waterlogging, and anything that can’t handle frosts and snowfall,” Tim explains.

 As the seasons change, so does the garden: bird- and bee-attracting blooms star in spring and summer, while foliage contrast and skeletal structure feature in the colder months. “In winter, you learn to appreciate that different, ghostly look,” Rhonda says.

 Maintenance is minimal – even the weeds look like they belong here. “Tim comes back in July-August and we chop everything back to about a foot high,” she says. “It gives me a bit of a shock, especially with the smoke bushes, but – oh, my goodness – they come back!”

Rhonda loves to share the interactive nature of her garden. In April 2023 she gave access to the public as part of the Open Gardens Victoria scheme. “We had 630 people over two days; they came from all over to get an idea of what to do with a small, suburban garden. They couldn’t believe it was so young.”

 Her best tip for achieving something similar in your own garden is to “buy lots of plants all at once so it all grows up together. We bought 15 of everything and planted them in clumps of five,” she says. 

It also helps, of course, to enlist the help of someone who knows what they’re doing. “I’m still surprised by how much interest my garden gets, but then I’m not, because it’s just so beautiful, and it’s all thanks to Tim – he’s the artist.” 

Photography by Martina Gemmola