When Frank Harrison moved in to his Meadow Springs house, the gardens consisted of a few struggling palm trees and two large yards of weeds.
Seven years later, his masterpiece is the pride of the street.
“Pretty much everything you see, except for the big palms, is what we’ve put in in the last 7 years,” Frank said.
Frank’s garden pairs modern Australian innovation with old-fashioned romantic sentiment, all on a quarter acre block.
The secret to creating such a sanctuary in the home is creating organic, irregular levels, and having an eye for detail.
Frank has used spare soil and large found limestone boulders to build up garden beds into little hills, with winding paths and even a water feature in the back yard to allure garden-goers to venture further.
“I didn’t want an even garden level,” he said.
“I wanted ups and downs.”
Frank has approached planting in this way too, taking advantage of nooks in rocks to plant shallow-rooted natives, and under-planting taller bushes and trees with colourful annuals.
His front garden features shrubby waterwise plants like Callistemon (Bottlebrush), Grevillia and Acacia, with gaps between them filled by subtly-coloured cosmos, daisies, Pimelea and Verticordia.
His contemporary, structural vegetable garden along the back fence has been achieved by salvaging large black rubber pipes of different widths from his work driving road trains, and cutting them to different lengths to be used as raised garden beds.
The back garden also features an impressive water feature, which Frank created himself by mounding soil, and then pouring cement to create a picturesque creek, kept crystal clear by chlorine.
Iceberg roses, salvia, rosemary, miniature daisies and lomandra line the ‘creek’: an unusual grouping of plants, but one that gives the area a tranquil feeling, and that – aside from the roses – doesn’t drop too much organic matter into the water.
By cramming the garden bed with plants, there is no room left for weeds.
“My idea was, plant too much, and then cut out what doesn’t survive,” he said.
“Thin it out to what’s most healthy later on.”
And Frank’s garden sure is healthy: it’s very well-fed.
“Any time I get spare soil or mulch or anything, it goes into the garden beds to fill it up, and it keeps everything nutrient rich,” he said.
The Harrison household keeps a compost bin by their veggie patch, and any spare lawn clippings or food scraps go straight in for use on the garden.
Frank also applies seaweed solution with a watering can regularly, and applies slow-release granules every three months.
I think what Frank’s garden shows us is that you can create something really beautiful without having too much space, simply by building up different levels, creating different “rooms” in the garden, and planting tightly.