When Ailsa Smith and her husband
decided it was time to downsize
in 2007,
they moved to Gordon Park in Brisbane's inner north.
The house took up most of the 300-square-metre block,
and Ailsa wanted to make the most of the space that was left for a garden.
She enlisted the help of garden designer Phillip O'Malley.
He came up with a surprising idea - a cloister garden.
PHILLIP: And it's just...it is incredible how that fitted in.
AILSA: It did. No, it worked perfectly.
(SERENE MUSIC)
Traditional European cloister gardens
are designed to be walled sanctuaries for prayer and contemplation
by religious communities.
Key features are formality and strong geometric lines.
They often have a central fountain
and are best viewed from a high point.
Except for the walls,
Phillip's contemporary design has adopted all these features.
Initially, we had to just level up the land,
which is important to get
kind of a formal garden,
and then it just happened to allow
all these concentric circles.
But it's also above the road.
You're also looking from a beautiful two-storey Queenslander,
which gives you an even better vista.
And you're kind of looking out
over, you know, the suburbs of Brisbane,
but particularly when you're upstairs,
it's got that parterre vista down onto the garden
which gives you layers across on an angle
but very different in its experience than being on the ground.
(BIRDSONG)
And being a circular, cross-based patterning,
your vista is equally beautiful from many aspects.
So, it's got a lovely modernist twist to a cloister.
As a spiritual garden,
I think that's a term that can put...
..you know, a lot of people get a bit spooky with that,
but to me a spiritual garden is like a heart garden.
And it's a garden that its owner loves,
so, like a classic cloister garden that would belong to some community,
somebody's always running their eye over it and loving it,
and it's a really lovely energy to it that I think is great.
So, you've used a European style garden,
but it's certainly subtropical plants.
Yes. Yes.
The box hedging is really primary,
and that's the Japanese box hedging and the small-leaf Japanese box
for Queensland and Sydney are the best.
They're wonderful native lilly pillies,
which can last for years as a topiary
if you use the shrub varieties.
There's sasanqua camellias,
which, of course, you can manage any way you want.
We're quite informal with them.
Then there's tabebuias on the footpath.
And, of course, the central fountain,
and even around the fountain
we've just got a liriope,
which is beautifully cut at the moment.
There's dipladenias, or mandevillas, in the tubs.
So, many layers
and lots of room also for Ailsa, the wonderful owner,
to have her special plants within.
While the design of this garden was collaborative,
the rest of the furnishing of the garden
is thoroughly down to Ailsa.
She has a large and diverse collection of pot plants
and she's exploited every ecological niche that the garden has.
When we moved from our previous address,
I brought everything I could in the garden that was portable,
so we just popped them on the fence,
and in time the fence started to collapse.
I fixed up the fence while I had the builders here
and they put in
this lovely wiring
so as I could put as many pots as I liked and be a very happy woman.
Well, it's a brilliant set-up.
And it's really flexible. Yes.
And you've got a great collection of ferns,
and the begonias are just to die for.
Yeah, they are. They're beautiful. It's a joy to behold.
Oh, thank you, Jerry. It's a secret garden.
Yes, it is. (CHUCKLES) Yes.
I love to just admire and just touch the plants
and see the different shades and the different lights.
And they almost talk to you, don't they? (LAUGHS)
Formal gardens can be high-maintenance,
but that isn't a problem for Ailsa.
There's a lot of gardening,
and I've made it that way
because I can't resist buying plants and adding this and adding that
and I've gotta have this and I've gotta have that.
But anyhow... (LAUGHS) That's what it's all about.
But we love it, so that's the main thing, isn't it?
Are you happy with the design that Phillip created?
Oh, yes, very happy with it.
We worked well together and I loved it from the very beginning.
And I'm very pleased that he's here today too.
And how did you feel about creating this garden?
Oh, very pleased,
and very pleased to have co-created it in the first place
and just to see it growing so beautifully and so well loved.
(BIRDS CALL)