“It was a perfect aspect, the level changes presenting plenty of design opportunities.” A garden designer rarely scores a massive blank canvas on which to paint a richly tinted, multilayered landscape, especially on Sydney’s densely built lower north shore. But, in 2011, Matthew Cantwell of Secret Gardens received a fortuitous phone call from a homeowner who had bought a neighbouring property. “The house had already been demolished and the site reduced to a virtual quarry, cut six metres into solid sandstone,” he says.
The steep, north-facing site cascaded 30 metres from the street to the water. “It was a perfect aspect, the level changes presenting plenty of design opportunities for destination points bathed in yearround sunshine.” So far, so good. “But there was no soil, just rock, with no vegetation…
