Difficulties designing a steep sloped garden? Jane visits a gardener that has managed just that. Subscribe 🔔 ab.co/GA-subscribe
Chloe Thomson is a television and online presenter, writer and horticulturist living in Melbourne’s northeast. One of her biggest off-screen challenges has been the creation of her home garden, designed around what she calls her treetop house. Chloe’s garden sits on a quarter-acre block on a serious slope. “The garden really appealed to me here because there’s lots of different spaces, on different heights.”
As you enter the driveway, the first section of the garden has been created as a family space with a lawn and trampoline. It’s situated close to the road but remains calm and peaceful - “you still feel snug.” While the lawn is not that big, Chloe says the slope is “just right to lean back and read a book.”
A steep driveway really can be difficult for gardens. Chloe says, “to get things to stay and survive in this environment, we had to first play with Corten steel” to terrace the garden into beds. The steel panels arrive flat and black and can be shaped to the slope and filled in with backfill. Over time the steel changes to a rusty colour. This is a dry-shade microclimate, which can be a tricky place to plant, but Chloe has chosen plants to suit the environment. Succulents have been planted using a “tried-and-true rip it off and shove it in the ground method.” The variegated Carex ‘Feather Falls’ bring a pop of brightness, and the Arthropodiums, Chloe says, are “fairly bomb-proof.”
Onwards and upwards, a wooden flight of stairs takes you up through the garden and towards a cliff face about two meters from the back of the home. It’s a narrow space and has other uses for utilities such as the water heater and ladders. Chloe utilises the raised garden bed at the back as her ‘picking garden’ filled with dahlias, zinnias and oregano.
One of Chloe’s newer projects is a self-built glasshouse which was initiated during lockdown. It’s made from 100% recycled windows found on the side of the road or the tip, which Chloe calls “freecycling”. It’s a great space to grow some tropical plants that wouldn’t survive outside in the cold, such as turmeric, ginger, curry leaf and frangipani.
The next set of stairs is designed with Cordon steel “to hug the landscape”, filled in with pale gravel. To get an even grade on such a slope is a huge amount of work, especially when hand built. To do this, Chloe says this process was done “literally one step at a time. Starting at the bottom, we did perhaps one step on one weekend, then two steps on another, gradually making our way up to the top.”
Near the top of the property is a chook house with three silkies who are laying eggs, have free reign in the lawned areas, and the kids love them. At the height of the garden is a very inviting green lawn. Chloe says, “being at the top of the garden, you can perch yourself and admire the view, which is really nice.”
Jane comments on Chloe’s use of the vertical elements that complement the steepness of the space and give a sense of height when looking out across the view. The climbing Hops grows very tall in summer and is harvested for homebrew before dying back down in the Autumn. A new addition to the garden is another climber, the warty gourd, which Chloe says may end up hollowed out for Christmas decorations.
A small side pathway offers a view that is higher than the house, which shows you how steep this garden really is. In this spot, Chloe grows a viburnum hedge, chalk sticks, tussock grass, westringia, “and of course yellow paper daisies - I have a bit of a thing for them.”
Chloe’s advice to anyone wanting to build a garden on a steep slope is to “look at different retaining options, look at ways you can create planting pockets or planting spaces. Things don’t have to be straight. I think people think too much that retaining walls and retaining soil needs to be all straight. Think outside the box.” Rather than being daunted by this steep slope, Chloe has embraced the unique opportunities that have arisen, and in the process has created a great family space.
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