About
Charlie Albone
26 year-old Charlie Albone was born in Hong Kong and moved to the UK when he was 12 years old. It was there that he developed a keen interest in landscapes and gardens. On leaving school, he landed a job maintaining the grounds of an English country manor. With no formal qualifications, he learnt on the job and worked for many UK landscaping companies before coming to Australia on a working holiday seven years ago. He fell in love with the country and decided to further his education by gaining a diploma in horticulture and landscape design, from Ryde TAFE in Sydney. While at college, Charlie started his own landscaping company “Inspired Exteriors”, which he now runs as a full time business. His main client base is in Sydney’s inner West, where he creates stylish city gardens. At the other end of the spectrum, Charlie has worked on country gardens in the Southern Highlands and even France. He continues to keep links with the UK horticulture industry, by slotting in jobs when he visits family back home. In the future, Charlie would like to work on more conceptual gardens using new materials. He also has a keen interest in sustainability. In Selling Houses Australia, Charlie makes over all of the gardens in the homes featured in the series ready for sale. This is his first television series.
For any landscape design work you may be interested in hiring Charlie to undertake, you can contact him directly via his website www.inspiredexteriors.com.au
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Last month we looked at hedging and mass plantings as styles for your garden beds and this month we will go a bit further with, feature plants, mixed garden beds and clump and drift planting.
Feature plants:
Feature plants are the real show stoppers of the garden and individually, or in small numbers, give punchy impact to a garden. A feature plant can draw the eye to an area or lead a person through a garden with ease. These sorts of plants also work well at the entrance of a house. Make sure you do not go over the top with feature plants as they then loose their impact. The best feature plant I have seen to date was in Hampton court gardens and it was a very mature aloe ferox in a pot. Feature plants are set off really well by pots as pots raise the plant that few extra feet that make sure their on the stage they deserve.
Feature plants:
Feature plants are the real show stoppers of the garden and individually, or in small numbers, give punchy impact to a garden. A feature plant can draw the eye to an area or lead a person through a garden with ease. These sorts of plants also work well at the entrance of a house. Make sure you do not go over the top with feature plants as they then loose their impact. The best feature plant I have seen to date was in Hampton court gardens and it was a very mature aloe ferox in a pot. Feature plants are set off really well by pots as pots raise the plant that few extra feet that make sure their on the stage they deserve.
When choosing plants for a certain area or effect think about the plant and how it grows, what shape does it have and how does that shape change as it matures. These factors will affect the type of plant you choose for the style of planting you want. Over the next two months we will look at the most common styles of planting with a few of my favorite combinations thrown in.
Hedging:
Hedges can be found in almost every Australian garden and are a great green boundary in the garden; they can be used for screening out ugly fences, intruding neighbors and defining boundary lines. Low hedges define garden bed borders and help frame the plants that make up the center of the bed. Not all hedges have to be formal; do not automatically think of a formal style when you think of hedges. A loose hedge can create the feeling of segregation without installing the formal theme. Aerial hedges or pleaching can have a great effect but work best in larger spaces where the open aspect of the pleach can be exploited. My favorite native hedge is the Acmena (lilly pilly) as it grows quickly, has great dense green foliage. There are now even cyillid free varieties. For low formal hedging it’s hard to go past buxus with its compact growth and hardy when established nature. Another great hedging genus is the viburnums, mostly quick growing with a huge variety of flowering shrubs, these can be formal or loose and can be used almost anywhere.
Hedging:
Hedges can be found in almost every Australian garden and are a great green boundary in the garden; they can be used for screening out ugly fences, intruding neighbors and defining boundary lines. Low hedges define garden bed borders and help frame the plants that make up the center of the bed. Not all hedges have to be formal; do not automatically think of a formal style when you think of hedges. A loose hedge can create the feeling of segregation without installing the formal theme. Aerial hedges or pleaching can have a great effect but work best in larger spaces where the open aspect of the pleach can be exploited. My favorite native hedge is the Acmena (lilly pilly) as it grows quickly, has great dense green foliage. There are now even cyillid free varieties. For low formal hedging it’s hard to go past buxus with its compact growth and hardy when established nature. Another great hedging genus is the viburnums, mostly quick growing with a huge variety of flowering shrubs, these can be formal or loose and can be used almost anywhere.
Choosing plants for your garden can seem like a daunting process especially if you are not a “green thumb”. This green element of the garden design is the one that is going to give your garden its real impact and flavor. Don’t despair if your not one of the green thumbs because luckily gardeners are usually the sharing type so help really isn’t too far away.
When I design a garden I like to have an idea of what plants I may use whilst I design but these are never set in stone. The placement and general characteristics (height, shape, impact) of the plant will stay true to the design but the actual plant will be chosen at the nursery. I like to do things this way because I will always see I plant I have never seen before at the nursery and this may be the winner I’m after. Whilst developing the built sections of the garden you will notice micro climates that previously had gone unnoticed or had been created by construction, these will affect the final plants you choose.
When I design a garden I like to have an idea of what plants I may use whilst I design but these are never set in stone. The placement and general characteristics (height, shape, impact) of the plant will stay true to the design but the actual plant will be chosen at the nursery. I like to do things this way because I will always see I plant I have never seen before at the nursery and this may be the winner I’m after. Whilst developing the built sections of the garden you will notice micro climates that previously had gone unnoticed or had been created by construction, these will affect the final plants you choose.
The shape and detail of each garden element inevitably impacts on the finish of a garden design. For example a seating area could be purely for function or it could be the main feature of the garden. When designing remember not everything can be a stand out feature. For example the seat I built below is rather quirky but works in the area as it is its main and only feature. This could work with other elements but they would have to complement the bench and not fight it for attention.
In my previous blogs I have discussed base plans and garden styles; the next step to designing a garden is the setting out and laying down of key areas. These key areas will define what you want in your garden, examples are; entertaining areas, kids play areas, space for pets, swimming pools or water features. The list goes on and on.
The placement of these areas relates directly to the style of garden you want. For example with the placement of an entertaining space: If you want a wilderness type of free flowing garden then you may want to wonder through the garden before reaching the entertaining space, thus connecting you with the wilder greener side of the garden. Or if a formal more regimented garden is more your style then placing the entertaining space off an existing structure such as the house you will get the effect of the lines of that structure continuing into the garden and this will add to its formality.
The placement of these areas relates directly to the style of garden you want. For example with the placement of an entertaining space: If you want a wilderness type of free flowing garden then you may want to wonder through the garden before reaching the entertaining space, thus connecting you with the wilder greener side of the garden. Or if a formal more regimented garden is more your style then placing the entertaining space off an existing structure such as the house you will get the effect of the lines of that structure continuing into the garden and this will add to its formality.
As a garden designer I try to change and use different garden styles as much as possible. This keeps designing interesting and stops me from getting bored. I love the peacefulness a Japanese garden can give its surroundings. Similarly a native garden can root and ground a space deeply both physically and emotionally; contemporary gardens can be both challenging and intriguing. Every individual garden style evokes a different genius loci (mood) for its inhabitants- working out what you want for your own personal garden is where the fun of garden design begins.
When I first started designing gardens I used various methods of design: first, at the age of 16, I tried the ‘going in all guns blazing method’. This simply consisted of me stepping into a backyard (luckily my mother’s) with a whole bunch of materials and just going for it. Needless to say, my mother was not impressed with the results! Secondly, after being thwarted by my first attempt at it, I roughly (not to scale) scribbled out a plan showing areas of interest I wanted to incorporate into the design. These included entertaining spaces, water features and utility areas. Then I ran outside, once again like a bull in a china shop, and went for it. The results were less than inspiring; the scale and marriage of each element were completely out of proportion to each other. With all her wisdom my mother had persuaded me to mark out this design before I wasted any more time constructing. So back to the drawing board I went, and this time I was armed with a scale ruler and a proper drawing board. It was here the design and garden really took shape. A few years on, the finished garden is shown below:
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