Inside the rambling, theatrical garden with a mellow heart
Just as you think you’ve got the measure of Jeremy Valentine and Grant Francis’ garden, you round a corner and everything shifts. Twists and contrasts abound here. The mood is both theatrical and earthy. The plantings feel bold with a lick of wildness. Sun-bleached grey beds bump up against hyper-saturated green ones. Peacocks and guinea fowl saunter about olives and cacti.
Valentine and Francis have strong ideas and a confident touch. They met at art school close to 35 years ago, are avid collectors and together own the vintage clothing and accessories stores Shag. With their gardening, as with their collecting, they chart their own course.
Jeremy Valentine and Grant Francis in their garden.Credit: Simon Schluter
But they know when to pull back too. Their garden is unique and distinctive but it never feels over-worked.
It is in Clydesdale in central Victoria, about halfway between Daylesford and Castlemaine, and Valentine once wrote about how when they saw the property from the road almost a year before it went up for sale, and they were “instantly smitten”.
It has a mid-1800s hand-hewn stone farmhouse, an assortment of historic farm buildings and 6.5 hectares of land. While they have transformed the place in the 11 years since they bought, they have been careful to retain the atmospheric, understated tone that first caught their eye.
“If you tune into the atmosphere here and what the place is telling you, you can’t make mistakes,” Valentine says.
But many of us do, and this place is a great lesson in how to create a garden that is exciting but also mellow. Even for Valentine and Francis, who split their time between here and Melbourne, it has been a learning curve.
They have been careful to retain the atmosphere that first drew them to the property.Credit: Simon Schluter
Soon after the couple acquired the property they installed what Valentine describes as “big, fancy urns” in one spot in the garden. He says that it was immediately “glaringly obvious they were a mistake”.
“They were so grandiose, they looked absurd.” There’s a certain mood here and the urns were fighting against it.
“We have learned the language of the land and climate and heritage,” Valentine says. “It dictates what we do.”
Their property, called “The Stones”, is in a drought-prone area that gets about 620mm of rain a year and that experiences both brutal frosts and searing heat. While the garden has volcanic soil, Valentine says it is so shallow that it’s like gardening on a sieve. “The water just leaks through.”
Burgundy cordylines theatrically arranged around a 1920s milking shed.Credit: Simon Schluter
They have chosen predominantly tough plants, such as olive trees, rosemary, lavender, succulents and Mediterranean-climate perennials, which can cope with the challenging conditions. One of their favourite trees is the jacaranda but because it won’t survive the hard frosts, they have opted for the large-leafed Paulownia instead.
Francis, who used to work as a hairdresser and became “an expert in the hardest, sharpest ’80s bob”, is responsible for pruning. With the shade trees (including the Paulownias and olives and also walnuts) he reveals a lot of bare trunk – the more gnarled the better – and accentuates a wide canopy. But for some shrubs (Teucrium fruticans and Correa alba, for example) he goes in crisp and tight and then shakes up the mood by interspersing this harder-edged fare with looser and freer fare offerings (such as ornamental grasses and Melianthus major).
The garden is full of different leaf shapes and formsCredit: Simon Schluter
While the interplay between different leaf shapes and forms is central here, there is also the flash of flowers, including (depending on the season) sculptural artichokes, cardoon, Echinops ‘Ritro Blue’ and Sedum ‘Autumn Joy’.
Threaded throughout are walls built from the local stone. Some of the walls were here when they arrived but Valentine has built lots more, as well as a dramatic stone pedestal that he and Francis have topped with a giant container of architectural cacti and surrounded by a whimsical swathe of sedums.
Everything they have introduced – the pergola covered in kiwi fruit, the arbour smothered in grape vines, the vegetable beds, the cactus garden, the gravel pathways – they have created themselves.
“We don’t want it to look too professional,” Valentine says.
Keeping things in balance is one of Valentine and Francis’ strong points. Take the slender burgundy cordylines they acquired from a new housing estate and theatrically arranged around a 1920s milking shed. Or the swaying waves of Miscanthus sinensis they have deployed to blend their garden into the surrounding paddocks.
These two know how to create a mood that sweeps you up but doesn’t feel forced. Everything is perfectly judged, including the dose of craziness.
The Stones, 1530 Hepburn-Newstead Road, Clydesdale is open to the public on Saturday 26 April and Sunday 27 April, 10am to 4.30pm, $10. Go to opengardensvictoria.org.au for more information.
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