Sydney-based garden designer Peter Fudge has never been fazed by the fact that Australia is the driest continent in the world.
Photography courtesy of Peter Fudge Gardens.
Known for his love of French gardens and symmetry, Fudge re-interprets the formality of Versailles–without the fussiness–to create a modern drought-tolerant garden with parterres, mirror-image garden beds, and drifts of color.
Fudge likes to plant drifts of lavender to create a loose border.
The view from the front porch is of symmetrical garden beds bordered by paths of large stone pavers set in decomposed granite, a permeable design to capture and recycle water.
To create hazy drifts of color, Fudge uses a Mediterranean palette of pale purple, silver, and blue-green.
Lavender plants like to be watered infrequently, but deeply. The way to make any garden look larger, Fudge says, is to use different spaces to create distinct destinations.
A hedge of Japanese boxwood, which has a looser look than traditional English box, edges the garden beds with formality but no fussiness.
Three important steps to creating a successful drought tolerant garden are soil improvement, compost, and mulch.
For more of our favorite drought tolerant gardens, see Designer Visit: An Indoor-Outdoor Garden in LA by Judy Kameon.