Enter Etre through the red Tori with its rooftop garden of wild strawberries and kangaroo grass and discover a delightful mix of plants, clever design, creativity, and sustainability!

Twenty-one fruit or nut trees and ten floriferous native and ornamental trees on this 660 sq metre block provide year-round food, fragrance and bright colour as well as ‘air conditioning’ in the summer months!

This quiet sanctuary is the home of Evette Sunset, a garden designer and sculptor who cleverly uses natural materials, found objects and re-purposed building materials in her designs. The garden’s layout and the placement of plants has been carefully considered for visual as well as practical reasons. Fruit trees and ornamentals are selected and placed to integrate aesthetically with the design of the house and to provide stimulating but soothing views from within, also to maximise sun, shade and shelter according to the seasons.

The planting is imaginative and shows Evette’s extensive horticultural knowledge. A ‘waterless waterfall’ of silver Dichondra flows into a ‘pool’ of aromatic thyme and, nearby architectural tree euphorbias surround a sunken garden with floor and low walls formed from up-cycled chunks of aged concrete softened with planting of ‘tea herbs’. Growing amongst ancient local slate ‘tiger rocks’ are carpets of flowering groundcovers, blue grasses and low medicinal shrubs.

There is a moon hut and an outdoor shower and a scented rosemary hedge is ideal for drying socks! Cladding boards from the house build have been re-used and now form raised beds filled with organically grown vegetables. Throughout the garden edible plants are popped in amongst the ornamentals.

Etre is artistic, ingenious and productive; a small-scale example of living sustainably in an attractive setting.

• Walk & Talks with Evette at 11am & 2pm daily including biodynamic stirring demonstration.
• Gumboot café - Tea, drinks and homemade healthy snacks, savory & sweet.
• Live music.

Size: 660sqm.

Please note: This garden is not suitable for wheelchairs or prams; it has slightly uneven paths. There is a beehive in the neighbour's garden. 

Charity: Bassett Street Reserve:

Across the road Bassett Street Reserve is where Evette has helped with the design and coordination of an imaginative neighbourhood, planting project.
The creek bed has been upgraded and the area planted with a small ‘pocket forest’ of deciduous and small native tree species selected for their flowers, foliage, seeds, bark and suitability for the site. Trees include a number of Zelkova which shade a ‘walkers’ tunnel’ and others that provide food and habitat to wild life.

This self-initiated and evolving venture is in collaboration with the Onkaparinga Council.