Saskia Havekes’ blooming inspiration in Woollahra

Saskia Havekes knew she had to buy her house in Sydney’s Woollahra when she saw what was growing in the backyard.

Grandiflora Saskia Havekes. Picture: John Feder

Saskia Havekes knew she had to buy her house in Sydney’s Woollahra when she saw the large fiddle-leaf fig growing in the backyard.

The year was 2000 and while the now popular plant was not well known at the time, the leading florist was passionate about its distinctive broad leaves which she’d used in her floral creations.

“I was like ‘oh my god, it’s got this huge fiddle fig tree — we really have to get this place’,” Havekes recalls with a smile.

Twenty-one years on, the tree now towers over the roof of the rambling eastern suburbs home where the charming Havekes lives with her photographer husband Gary Heery, their two daughters Ginger, 24, and Sunday, 18, and Ginger’s dog Prince.

Built on a slope leading down to Cooper Park, the home is only a few kilometres from the inspirational florist’s wildly successful Potts Point studio, Grandiflora, named after her favourite flower, the magnolia grandiflora. Opened in 1995, the studio’s clientele includes celebrities and high-profile event organisers as well as Sydneysiders who share a love of Havekes’s work.

Havekes says that while the irregular layout of her three-storey house deterred other homebuyers, she and Heery were “up for it”.

Saskia Havekes says goign to the flower market is still one of the joys in her life. Picture: John Feder.

“We moved in and pulled up all the carpet and did some Japan black paint on the pine floorboards, which was quite hip for its time, and then eventually we opened all the kitchen up,” she says.

Filled with character-packed timber furniture and wonderful artwork, there’s a relaxed, creative and eclectic feel to the four-bedroom, three-bathroom home.

While the house has many inviting spaces, the large living area is Havekes’s favourite, its outlook over the lush garden and birdlife providing the ideal setting for entertaining.

The couple’s friend, sculptor John Ladyman, helped with the transformation of the space, finding the rustic glass-paned timber doors that now open to a balcony overlooking bamboo bushes and a large macadamia tree.

Fittingly, the white cabinetry in the redesigned kitchen features small carved wooden flowers as handles — another Ladyman find — while floral patterns appear in the living area’s decorative plaster ceilings, a legacy of the home’s Californian bungalow origins which Havekes insisted on retaining.

“I just think they are so charming — you don’t really see them much nowadays. I’m a great advocate for holding on to the older things,” she says.

The living area also serves as a floral “laboratory”, with its oversized rustic pine table often lined with jugs and vases of different flowers to enable Havekes to study how they open, how their fragrance develops and how long they last — knowledge she shares with her team and her clients.

“I like to see the flowers with candlelight in the night too because I’m always working at events, parties and weddings and I like to know what stands out against a beeswax candle or a tea light with clear glass,” she explains.

Saskia Havekes with a painting by her father Gerard. Picture: John Feder

Havekes traces her love of flowers back to her childhood, spent exploring the bushland and gardens of the family home in northern Sydney’s Kenthurst where she was raised by her sculptor, painter and ceramicist father, the late Gerard Havekes, and her mother ­Louise, an art enthusiast and flower lover, whose own mother and aunts used to paint still life studies of flowers.

Havekes’s two sisters also inherited the floral gene — Ineke is the official florist at Government House Tasmania while Anna-Maryke is a photographer of still life and flowers in the fashion of Dutch masters.

Ceramic tiles made by Havekes’s father line an external staircase leading to the florist’s garden, while two of his paintings sit in her living area. Other works in the room include a portrait gifted to the florist by artist Del Kathryn Barton and a painting of a flower by Susan Norris, which Havekes describes as her “most favourite artwork”. There’s also an exquisite creation made from cicada wings by florist turned artist Alison Coates, who Havekes once worked for and regards as a mentor.

Striking works by Heery hang throughout the home including in the couple’s sunny top floor bedroom, where the photographer’s portrait of actress Cate Blanchett rests underneath one of his many beautiful bird images.

Despite her busy schedule, Havekes still leaves her Woollahra home punishingly early three mornings a week, heading to the Sydney Flower Market for its 5am opening so she can select the best flowers for Grandiflora.

“I’m completely addicted to the market. Every single market for more than 30 years now, I still get that rush when the roller door goes up … I love it, love it, love it,” she smiles.