Tucked into the heart of Toorak, this expansive garden offers a welcome sense of escape from the surrounding city. Designed in collaboration with Cera Stribley, the project responds to a challenging, multi-level site, where steep topography became an opportunity rather than a constraint, capturing long views, borrowed landscape and beautiful internal sightlines throughout the home.

The client’s brief called for a garden with true wow factor: distinctive planting, generous spaces for leisure and entertaining, and a landscape that could be enjoyed from every vantage point. The result is an immersive garden, experienced both when moving through the outdoor spaces and when viewed through the home’s large architectural apertures.

An L-shaped floor plan frames a central courtyard that is visible from the moment you enter the home. From this elevated vantage, the view unfolds across water, pool and lawn to the landscape beyond. Around the corner, the outlook from the gym centres on a lush water garden and natural pool, anchored by a dramatic waterfall that becomes a defining feature of the project.

The garden itself is arranged across three distinct pockets, each carrying its own character while working together as a single composition. At the front, a verdant threshold planting softens the arrival experience and eases the transition from street to home. On the main level, a landscaped patio connects the residence directly to the pool, with a young jacaranda planted at its centre, destined to become a living centrepiece as it matures. To the rear, the garden wraps around the raised body of the pool, taking in a cactus garden and a secluded pond along the way.

Closer to the home, an exotic palette of sculptural forms, including grass trees, tree aloe and cycads, softens the architecture and draws the eye through generous glazing. Toward the boundary, the planting shifts to a more local palette, borrowed from the surrounding neighbourhood and better suited to the site’s edges. A once-overlooked sheltered nook between pool and house, at risk of becoming a dark and forgotten corner, has been transformed into a tranquil water feature complete with lily pads, ferns and palms. A sheltered rear pocket brings together native grasses, flowering perennials and a cluster of statuesque cacti, offering textural interest and colour across every season.

Hard and soft materials are used in deliberate contrast throughout the garden. Curved corten planters hold soft, layered plantings, dark steel battens form an undulating pool fence that dissolves into the greenery, and bluestone paving is laid in irregular lines underfoot. Each material and planting decision has been considered in relation to its neighbours, so that no single element sits in isolation.

Water threads through the whole design, connecting the pool, the natural swimming pond and the waterfall into one continuous experience that reads as landscape as much as architecture. Ongoing stewardship by the Phillip Withers team continues to guide the garden’s maturity, allowing this cultivated wilderness to grow richer and wilder with every passing year, exactly as intended from the outset.