At Home with Eco Garden Entrepreneur Joost Bakker - Gardenista
Born in the Netherlands and transplanted to Australia at age 9 Joost Bakker the son and grandson of tulip farmers... ...earns a living as a florist delivering and arranging flowers he grows on his own land to clients in Melbourne But at heart the high-school dropout is an eco-entrepreneur who designs zero-waste restaurants, composting toilets, freestanding vertical garden walls, and houses built of straw. Built in 2006 Bakker s 6 500 square foot home including living quarters garage and workshop is covered with a steel mesh commonly... ...used to reinforce concrete the metal scaffolding holds 11 000 terra cotta pots of strawberries grown from seed his uncle sent from Europe Photograph via Antarctica Architects. Beneath the metal mesh screen, the walls of the house are insulated with bales of straw behind a facade of corrugated, galvanized iron. Photograph via Joost Bakker. A Bakker-designed house in Kinglake about a half hour’s drive north of Melbourne has 700 straw bales in the walls and ceilings. “Most people don’t realize that straw is the world’s most abundant waste product with over 1 billion farmers producing it,” says Bakker. Photograph via The Australian. Bakker creates vertical gardens for clients; here he waters mint plants growing on the facade of Macquarie Bank. Photograph via The Design Files. On the six-acre site, a former cherry orchard, Bakker’s house overlooks verdant hillsides. Photograph via Antarctica Architects. “In some ways, Joost’s landscaping is even more extraordinary than the house,” says architect Brendan Jones of Antarctica Architects, who worked with Bakker on the project. Bakker built the house on a recycled concrete slab foundation and sided the walls in the entry courtyard with 150-year-old wood planks previously used on the Woolloomooloo wharves in Sydney. Photograph via The Design Files. A window in the study looks out onto the driveway–and a fanciful spherical sculpture Bakker created. Photograph via The Design Files. Bakker raises plants for his clients’ floral arrangements on several acres of his property.