Small spaces are always testing but single-fronted-terrace back gardens really take the cake. Narrow, shady, overlooked by the neighbours, underlaid with utilities pipes – the challenges are endless. I know because I have one. So has Anne Atkins, only she had the brainwave of introducing an arched black steel frame over hers. Almost 15 years on and her Fitzroy garden is a rampant, green version of her living room. Climbers, shrubs, perennials and annuals are layered all the way up to her second storey. Just as her house is teeming with vintage clothes, 1920s crockery and fairies, the garden is all Chilean jasmine and climbing roses tangling with honesty, nicotiana, ferns, foxgloves and silverbeet. Only four metres wide and about 10 metres long, this garden is almost entirely composed of plants. Don't be fooled by the chandelier suspended above, this is not an outdoor-entertaining backyard but one predominantly experienced from indoors. It's the same with the two internal lightwell-courtyards off Atkins' kitchen and living room – both crammed with ferns, succulents and the sort of decorative touches (paintings, plates, fairy paraphernalia) usually reserved for inside. Then there are the front window boxes filled with towering geraniums in three shades of pink and cascading blue lobelia that are coupled with cast-iron window grills Atkins had made after seeing similar ones in Budapest. She gives the boxes a liquid feed every two weeks and the whole effect feels wild and generous. Atkins, who had worked as a vintage clothing seller, glass artist and nurse before setting up a the first of her "Wonderwings" fairy shops at the age of 48 in 1990, says she likes a garden that offers "colour, abundance, a little bit of shade in summer and beauty all year round". "Aesthetics are very important to me, I love to be surrounded by beauty and if we can create it we should. When I moved here the garden was totally empty and after the back section of the house was finished in 2001 my specification to the guy from Gardens of Steel (who fabricated the back pergola) was to formalise the space between the brick walls, which I love. I wanted to plant creepers at every junction of the frame and in between plant everything else. It's not a delicate garden and for most of the year it is very low maintenance." The biggest challenge, she says, has been getting her colours to spread through the space in a "random, not so organised way" despite the different microclimates. "The area down the north (south-facing) side doesn't get much light in winter whereas the south side gets full sun." She frequently divides salvias and other perennials to experiment with their tolerances in sunnier or shadier spots. Climbers give her the height of trees but without the bulk, while hanging pots also introduce plants at eye level. "Depending on the weather and where the sun is hitting I switch the pots around and I am always cutting back to keep the right proportions." Despite being a collector of idiosyncratic pieces (think an early 20th century fruit ball shaped like a hand of bananas) for inside, she says she is not a plant collector as such. It's more about making sure there are no gaps and getting a plentiful effect with whatever catches her eye at her local nursery. It's been the same wherever Atkins, who closed her final fairy shop in 2001, has lived. When her house was a garden-free church hall in Richmond, Atkins talked those repaving the footpath into leaving areas in which she could plant the sort of hardy specimens that would cope with passing pedestrians, and when she lived in Canterbury with a "huge garden" she grew lashings of vegetables. "Gardens have been an interest to me since I was about three, though I did lose touch with it between the ages of about 15 and my late 30s. You are so busy with your career and life you tend to lose what's dearest to you for a while. "A patient once told me that when you garden something goes up your nostrils and makes you feel good, and I have never forgotten that. It's that sense of the earth. I usually don't wear gardening gloves I like to get my fingers in the dirt. Gardening is a meditation." Anne Atkins garden, 45 Napier Street, Fitzroy, is open from 10am to 4.30pm today and tomorrow (November 21 and 22), $8. See opengardensvictoria.org.au.
The garden of Wonderwings Fairy shop creator Anne Atkins Photo: Annabel Reid
Inside Anne Atkins' Fitzroy home.
Small spaces are always testing but single-fronted-terrace back gardens really take the cake. Narrow, shady, overlooked by the neighbours, underlaid with utilities pipes – the challenges are endless. I know because I have one. So has Anne Atkins, only she had the brainwave of introducing an arched black steel frame over hers.
Almost 15 years on and her Fitzroy garden is a rampant, green version of her living room. Climbers, shrubs, perennials and annuals are layered all the way up to her second storey. Just as her house is teeming with vintage clothes, 1920s crockery and fairies, the garden is all Chilean jasmine and climbing roses tangling with honesty, nicotiana, ferns, foxgloves and silverbeet.
Only four metres wide and about 10 metres long, this garden is almost entirely composed of plants. Don't be fooled by the chandelier suspended above, this is not an outdoor-entertaining backyard but one predominantly experienced from indoors.
It's the same with the two internal lightwell-courtyards off Atkins' kitchen and living room – both crammed with ferns, succulents and the sort of decorative touches (paintings, plates, fairy paraphernalia) usually reserved for inside. Then there are the front window boxes filled with towering geraniums in three shades of pink and cascading blue lobelia that are coupled with cast-iron window grills Atkins had made after seeing similar ones in Budapest. She gives the boxes a liquid feed every two weeks and the whole effect feels wild and generous.
Atkins, who had worked as a vintage clothing seller, glass artist and nurse before setting up a the first of her "Wonderwings" fairy shops at the age of 48 in 1990, says she likes a garden that offers "colour, abundance, a little bit of shade in summer and beauty all year round".
"Aesthetics are very important to me, I love to be surrounded by beauty and if we can create it we should. When I moved here the garden was totally empty and after the back section of the house was finished in 2001 my specification to the guy from Gardens of Steel (who fabricated the back pergola) was to formalise the space between the brick walls, which I love. I wanted to plant creepers at every junction of the frame and in between plant everything else. It's not a delicate garden and for most of the year it is very low maintenance."
The biggest challenge, she says, has been getting her colours to spread through the space in a "random, not so organised way" despite the different microclimates. "The area down the north (south-facing) side doesn't get much light in winter whereas the south side gets full sun."
She frequently divides salvias and other perennials to experiment with their tolerances in sunnier or shadier spots. Climbers give her the height of trees but without the bulk, while hanging pots also introduce plants at eye level. "Depending on the weather and where the sun is hitting I switch the pots around and I am always cutting back to keep the right proportions."
Despite being a collector of idiosyncratic pieces (think an early 20th century fruit ball shaped like a hand of bananas) for inside, she says she is not a plant collector as such. It's more about making sure there are no gaps and getting a plentiful effect with whatever catches her eye at her local nursery.
It's been the same wherever Atkins, who closed her final fairy shop in 2001, has lived. When her house was a garden-free church hall in Richmond, Atkins talked those repaving the footpath into leaving areas in which she could plant the sort of hardy specimens that would cope with passing pedestrians, and when she lived in Canterbury with a "huge garden" she grew lashings of vegetables.
"Gardens have been an interest to me since I was about three, though I did lose touch with it between the ages of about 15 and my late 30s. You are so busy with your career and life you tend to lose what's dearest to you for a while.
"A patient once told me that when you garden something goes up your nostrils and makes you feel good, and I have never forgotten that. It's that sense of the earth. I usually don't wear gardening gloves I like to get my fingers in the dirt. Gardening is a meditation."
Anne Atkins garden, 45 Napier Street, Fitzroy, is open from 10am to 4.30pm today and tomorrow (November 21 and 22), $8. See opengardensvictoria.org.au.
