5 minute read
Silver Show Gardens
By Mark Browning Landscape Design
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Mark Browning’s show garden, 'Aud' is a tribute to his late mother, Audrey, a passionate gardener and a formative influence on the designer’s own landscaping career. In his signature style, Mark uses bluestone exclusively for the structural elements of the garden, eschewing rectangular shapes, in favour of organic, flowing lines. A humble pavilion sits centrally, amid a collection of eclectic plantings, reminiscent of Audrey’s own gardening style. Mark wrote:
'Visual access to 'Aud' is deliberately compromised to just a couple of locations to enhance the mystery that Audrey was to horticulture and structure. Audrey’s gardens were always to be enjoyed from within and she had a strong indifference to showing them off, they were hers and never intended as an ego statement.
'Aud' possibly fails the show garden pub test as it is a tribute to a woman with no design or horticultural qualifications. What Audrey did possess are some things often absent in landscape design: personality, possibility and a wildly experimental spirit.”
'AUD' was the recipient of the Mark Bence Construction Award which recognises excellence in landscape construction.
By Steve Day for Tree & Shrub Growers VIC
Originally designed for the postponed show in 2020, the message behind ‘Resilience’ resonates even more loudly in 2022, in the wake of the global pandemic.
The ‘Resilience’ Show Garden at MIFGS 2022, is a demonstration of how an urban garden can be attractive, inviting, easy to maintain, and good for our resilience, which in turn improves our health and wellbeing.
It is also a good physical example of a resilient garden – with plants species selected for not only their aesthetic qualities, but also their resilience to pest and disease, drought, and the threat of climate change.
In describing the significance of gardens in boosting resilience, especially during Melbourne’s protracted lockdowns, designer Steve Day wrote:
“Residential gardens became one of the most critical parts of the home, and gave people the much needed respite from the world, and the reconnection to nature, that helped lower stress at a very stressful time. The green helped people be more resilient during all the uncertainty. Let’s never forget how important our local parks and home gardens were during this time.”
“We hope it inspires everyone to surround themselves with nature and recognise how every garden has a part to play for the improved resilience of our families and the whole community.”
Designed by Dylan Alcott & Vivid Design Constructed by Semken Landscaping
Tramlines is a collaboration between 2022 Australian of the Year, champion wheelchair tennis player and disability advocate Dylan Alcott with Carolyn and Joby Blackman of Vivid Design.
“To be involved in not only the design process but the activation of a fully accessible garden at the Show is something that’s really special to me. Gardens are often built and the accessibility is an afterthought and it’s hard to retrofit, so the fact that it’s been considered from the very beginning is really cool,” Dylan Alcott explains.
Designed from the outset as a fully accessible garden, the garden features inclusive seating, sensory plantings for stimulating the senses by touch and smell, garden beds placed at different heights , and a ramp for wheelchair access.
Different garden surfaces have been used to create auditory and textural cues for visitors, defining the different spaces in the garden. A gravel ring around the fire pit, for example, gives an auditory trigger that you are nearing the fire.
LVML Members, Semken Landscaping, led the building process with construction support from Kevin Heinze Grow, an equal opportunity employer and unique nursery that provides horticultural therapy programs, educational traineeships, and jobs for young people with disabilities. Plants and trees were sourced from supplier members Warners Nurseries and Established Tree Transplanters.
‘Tramlines’ was auctioned off after the Show, raising $35,750 for the Dylan Alcott Foundation, to help young Australians with disabilities. The garden will be redesigned in its new home by Mark Browning Landscape Design.
Designed by Vivid Design Constructed by Semken Landscaping
‘Apertura’ – which means ‘opening’ in Latin – is an exploration of the role of plants as an architectural element in the landscape, as opposed to a ‘touch of greenery’ at the end of the build.
The design revolves around an ‘Aperture’ espalier - an espaliered olive, designed and grown especially for the show, which blurs the line between hard and soft elements and plays with the idea of the ‘green’ built form.
Designers Carolyn and Joby Blackman wrote:
“For us, the last decade has made the idea of the use of plants as design elements in the garden even more crucial as the remaining spaces available to create gardens shrink and plants need to perform more roles. Buildings, pools, covered entertaining areas and just far fewer square metres for garden or green areas, has made us focus even more on how living elements can provide the bones of the garden - blurring the lines between built form, hardscape and softscape. on to Merrywood plants 3.5 years ago for them to perform their magic. It now forms the living centrepiece of the garden - the living sculptural form, without using a sculpture.
“We hope you can imagine the sculptural, consistent form of the Olive Aperture holding your attention when the flowers and waving grasses are sleeping and the leaves have lessened in winter with all that low, welcome winter sun penetrating the garden.
