(QUIRKY MUSIC)
Meet Sean Cook,
master florist, creator of colour explosions
and floral fireworks.
He designs these extravagant displays to enhance life's great moments.
Sean lives in Sydney's inner-city district of Redfern.
A few years ago, he found a house and garden
that needed his firecracker of an imagination to bring it to life.
I can't wait to get inside and see how Sean's day job,
creating floral extravaganzas,
has influenced his garden.
Hello, Sean. Hi. Good morning.
Welcome. I found the place.
Come in, come in.
What?!
This is spectacular. I mean... Yeah.
It's always a bit of a surprise when people come here for the first time.
It really sums you up. I can just see...
There's just colours bursting out everywhere
and, I mean, this artwork here...
Yeah, yeah, it's one of my favourites.
Actually painted by a friend of mine, Alesandro,
and he came up with this idea
to base an exhibition on all my flowers.
It's intense. Yeah.
He uses, like, incredible-quality paints.
And, yeah, you kind of almost wanna sort of lick it.
Yeah! Exactly. It's like gelato. Yeah.
Looking at all the colour and the paintings and that side of you,
I'm really keen to see how you've translated that into the garden.
Yeah, well, come and have a look. Whoa, look at this!
It opens out.
What a space. It's spectacular but equally it's unexpected.
Where's all your...your extravagance?
Well, my extravagance, there's lots of texture,
lots of pots that I've collected over the years.
No flowers.
I really didn't want any flowers in the garden.
But I also wanted a green, calming garden
to offset all the colour and texture and flowers in the house.
So it's a bit of a balance and counterbalance...
Yeah, yeah, exactly. ..for what's going on here.
This is your classic inner-city terrace.
It's a small, in fact, tiny footprint.
So what was here before when you first arrived?
Not much, Costa.
There was some treated-pine retaining wall
and a small lawn at the top.
There was one sad little tree and that was about it.
So what was your motivation and inspiration
behind creating these different spaces?
So my love of flowers and plants really started with my grandmother.
She lived in Parkes, in Central West New South Wales,
which is actually quite a dry, hot town,
but she had an incredible garden.
And attached to her house, they had a fernery,
which was this little magical garden I'd go and explore.
She had lots of ferns and big staghorns,
which I used to love and water.
That's the bit that's really nice,
to track where people's passion began,
and for you, it was your granny.
My granny in Parkes, yeah.
Having this flat and... roll out from the inside
is really the key to the success of this space.
Yeah, well, created the retaining wall.
We pushed it out and raised it
and planted the Rhipsalis in there and the figs
to create a sort of vertical green wall.
And it's done the job. It certainly has.
The Rhipsalis are going crazy there.
A little bit of mother-in-law's tongue.
And the rhapis looks fantastic.
But I think, looking up here, like, these steps,
they've been really nicely designed.
Yeah, well, when we originally moved in,
it was quite a narrow staircase and we widened it out here
to create a sort of better flow into the garden
and to create more room to put all my pots.
(CHUCKLES) Yeah.
And then it brings you up to this space, the upper level.
Yeah, we've created a few features up here.
We've got the clumping bamboo.
The pond that I really had to have.
And the mirror, which creates the illusion of a bigger yard.
The clumping bamboo is quite a feature in that corner.
Yeah, it's really done the trick.
We've been here for five years,
and that was one of the things we wanted to do
was screen out the neighbours
and within a year it had grown that tall.
We trim the leaves off the lower half,
just so you can get that lovely clean look of the bamboo
and let the top half just grow wild.
It's massive.
But then looking at all the other species,
you've got a really nice mix.
I mean, there's the walking iris,
then you've got this Plectranthus just filling a space.
Yeah, it's looking really lush at the moment.
And then the ginger, they're all tied in.
Yeah, it's all about texture. As long as it was green.
I didn't mind if it was a cactus. The tropical ginger.
And of course the staghorns, which is the ode to my grandmother.
Now, I wanted to ask you, Costa,
the old myth about throwing the banana peel into the staghorn.
Well, look, I know lots of people feed them bananas
and they consume them and...
They're doing pretty well. They're doing very well.
Great to see that you've got a dinosaur
living in front of the bamboo.
I know, I'd read and heard so much about the Wollemi,
so of course I had to have one in the garden.
And the conditions are perfect for it,
'cause it's protected from the hot...
Well, that's what I thought.
It's almost like a little rainforest jungle in here,
so he's doing OK.
Oh, it looks happy.
What's the plan behind the more structural elements,
like the clusters of pots?
Yeah, I love collecting the pots from different places.
You know, the beautiful Moroccan water pots here.
Some I have empty, some I've filled with plants.
The Rhipsalis there.
My beautiful copper pot over there with my spectacular cactus.
I don't know the name of him.
I just call him my 'Lost in Space' cactus.
Yeah, I love it. I can see dolphins in there.
I didn't see the dolphins up until now, but yeah.
And it's happy there.
I was a little bit worried,
because you always think cactus have to have full sun,
which we don't get a lot here,
but he seems to be doing really well and thriving.
Sean, your garden is really deceptive.
I'm looking at it since I've been here
and there's a small space but you've got so much in it,
but then you've repeated things to get effect
and you've got features and elements and so on,
but from a gardening point of view, what sort of maintenance is involved
to get the effect and the impact that you've got with this garden?
Well, we've chosen a lot of low-maintenance plants,
so apart from the odd sweeping leaves
and the gum flowers, when they drop,
it's a pretty much minimal-maintenance garden.
I love coming home here after a crazy day of floristry.
I love coming out here and pottering around.
Even though it's a low-maintenance garden,
I get in here and pull out the odd weed or two,
play in the fishpond, add to my pots.
What would your lovely mentor nan...
Nanna? I think she'd be pretty proud.
She never got to see the garden unfortunately,
but she would love my big staghorns that I've managed to grow.
And that she's grown a real gardener.
(CHUCKLES) I hope so.