A Landscape Designer’s Garden – Boulder House by Tamsin Johnson and Wyer & Co.
Over time, a lush and established garden becomes a reflection of a home and its occupants, and the gardens of Boulder House unfolds as such a reflection. Wyer & Co. sculpts the generous landscape of the studio’s creative director Anthony Wyer, taking cues from both local and Mediterranean sensibilities in creating an ideal outdoor immersive retreat.
Hugging the property that it shares the site with, the gardens of Boulder House are envisioned around ideas of escape. In referencing places afar, the resulting plantings and gathering spaces showcase how design can create transportive experiences. As the garden of a young family with four children, the design needed to reflect how they all lived within the home and engaged with the outdoors. The process took place across an elongated series of stages to ensure the right insertions and interventions would work and reflect its owners. Feeling resort-like, the large and encasing gardens function as both family retreat and social space.
Located in Sydney, a collaboration with interior designers Marco Meneguzzi and Tamsin Johnson sees the vision for the interior spaces align with the vision for the garden. The cabana structure sits both open and embracing of its surrounds, covered in greenery with its own planted roof. The space provides shelter from the sun, creating a place of reprieve from the activity, the pool and the heat of summer. A fireplace ensures a warmth and connection to the natural is felt, while ensuring comfort year-round. The open pergola is also waterproofed to ensure all of the outdoor spaces can be used regardless of season. While there is an expression of style, at the core of the garden is pragmatism and comfort, ensuring the outdoors can be enjoyed without needing to withstand the elements.
As the garden wraps the home, two differing aspects are created, but both share a similar sense of flow and movement between the inside and out. The front multi-tiered garden is elevated, facing the street and acts as an extension of the interior entertaining space. The outlook drinks in the afternoon sun and creates the ideal place for afternoon libations. The rear garden faces south and connects more to the living, kitchen and nurturing places of the home. Terracotta and textured natural stone sit alongside warming timber elements and create a complementary accompaniment to the surrounding greenery and plantings.
Through a European influence, Anthony Wyer brings a local understanding and embrace of context in the creation of Boulder House as an immersive series of gardens that express the landscape designer’s love of the natural.
