A delightful, joyous garden where every available space is jam-packed with interest.

A vibrant suburban garden overflowing onto the verge with succulents, agapanthus and iris planted under the beautiful jacaranda street trees.

The lawn has gone inside the front fence, and in its place is a colourful assortment of roses, salvias, cottage plants and fruit trees.

Behind the house, a lively alfresco eating area houses a collection of vivid blue and white pottery displayed on the walls and as containers filled with exuberant foliage or pretty, flowering plants. Pots and repurposed items in Anna’s favourite blue tones are everywhere, adding to the vibrancy and providing a home for her collections of orchids, begonias, and lovely lacy ferns.

A series of paths divide garden beds crammed with a bright mixture of ornamental plants – poppies, love-in-the-mist, alstroemeria, daylilies, and annuals intermingle with vegetables, herbs and fruit trees. Anna loves to cook, and productive plants are essential to her garden. The Mediterranean fruit trees mainly include mandarin, tangelo, lemon, quince, cumquat, peach, nectarine, persimmons, and pomegranates. Several tall trees provide dappled light ideal for shade-loving plants, and a shade house has many more pots and hanging baskets overflowing with palms, philodendrons, aspidistras and a variety of ferns, all flourishing and providing a fabulous rainforest-like show of leafy foliage.

Anna has six water tanks, and she gardens organically with eight bins in constant use to convert green waste to the rich compost that keeps the soil healthy and able to sustain the dense planting.