Lee Adams, Mandurang

328 Nankervis Road, Mandurang (2016)

Designer
Open Date
19 & 20 November 2016
Garden Entry
$
 

Note: This garden was opened in 2016

Bryan and Marcia Clements’ five acre garden, small working vineyard and recently renovated 1980’s home, is in Mandurang, a short country drive from the centre of Bendigo.

Marcia and Bryan’s frequent overseas travel and their love of European gardens influenced their design.  We have been able to include formal elements in the garden with a gradual transition to the natural bushland.  Local kangaroos are regular visitors to a manageable stretch of lawn in the back garden.

Considering the harsh rural environment and working with busy clients who have a love of entertaining, clean lines, generous gravel pathways, low rendered walls and a simple formal planting scheme have been used.

Deciduous trees, ornamental pears and crab apples, provide an ever changing framework and much needed summer shade to the garden with beautiful autumn colour, spring flowers and interesting branch structure in winter.

On entry, a cellar tower and art studio are framed by a Roman colonnade supporting climbing virginia creeper (parthenocissus queinquefolia) its gorgeous red foliage a feature in autumn.  The lines of the tower roof have been repeated in a recently constructed shade room beside the master bedroom where hardy succulents, requiring very little water, have been planted formally.

Close to the colonnade, a shallow reflection pool features between an avenue of pleached olives.  The pool and towering  gums are up lit for interest at night while tall, narrow growing ‘glauca’ pencil pines stand guard beside the cellar.

To accommodate friends and family on hot summer nights, a generous under cover seating area with a high roofline blurs the boundary between the house and garden at the rear of the property.  Existing plantings were retained here, their low growing branches removed to form a high canopy of shade to a fairy garden; a favourite destination for visiting children.