‘It makes me want to be braver’: The Aussie landscape designer taking cues from Belgium

Contemporary Belgian landscape architect Chris Ghyselen, who McMahon says also likes to keep a tight reign on some plants while leaving others “to explode in informality and wildness” is another inspiration, as is the Flanders-based landscape designer Jasmin Moris, who leaves pasture grasses to wander among roses and other shrubs “as if the roses are escapees”.

But, given how different Belgium’s climate is to that of Victoria – the country’s average rainfall is around 820mm (compared to Melbourne’s 630mm) and fairly evenly distributed throughout the year, while its summer temperatures rarely exceed about 24°C – McMahon says she will opt for different plants to achieve a similar look.

Instead of clipping box and yew for the formal areas, she suggests manipulating tough Australian species like westringias, Rhagodia spinescens, Correa alba, and Syzgium australe ‘Tiny Trev’. As for the looser counterpoints, she says chocolate lilies, vanilla lilies, paper daisies, sticky everlasting, scaevoloa, wallaby grasses and some of the finer lomandras would all work well.

When it comes to leaving grasses to grow long, sometimes with naturalistic paths mown through, she encourages us to try softer-leaved native grasses such as ‘Oxley’ wallaby grass, kangaroo grass and Microleana stipoides, all of which lend an air that’s both dynamic and playful.

Wilder, less tidy gardens have the added benefit of providing refuge and sustenance for bees and other pollinating insects, particularly relevant given the recent Varroa mite outbreak in honey bee hives in New South Wales and the ongoing threats posed to Australia’s native bees by climate change.

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While many Australian gardeners have been actively gardening for bees for years now, McMahon says authorities in Belgium –as well as other European countries – have gone further, mounting campaigns for people to create more ecological gardens that are full of plants and insects.

“There’s a real push to reintroduce indigenous species back into grazing fields and in (urban) streets every spare spot is filled with exuberant flowering plants. There are billboards encouraging people to have less concrete and more room for bees, they are really putting it in people’s faces.”

“I think I saw a lot more of that unkempt look in Belgium (than in other parts of Europe),” McMahon says. It’s an acquired taste at first but then it’s just beautiful. It made me think we don’t tolerate those things so well and maybe we need to look at these ideas through a new lens.”

Sandra McMahon’s illustrated talk, Tradition & Innovation in Belgian Landscape Design is hosted by Friends of Burnley Gardens and is at 7pm for 7.30pm on Wednesday 24 August in the main building at Burnley, $20/$5 members. Go to trybooking.com/CBHUQ to make a booking. McMahon will also lead tours to Belgium in 2023 and 2024 for Australians Studying Abroad.

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