3 weeks Ago By Megan Backhouse
Just as you think you’ve got the measure of Jeremy Valentine and Grant Francis’ garden, you round a corner and everything shifts. Twists and contrasts abound here. The mood is both theatrical and earthy.
The plantings feel bold with a lick of wildness. Sun-bleached grey beds bump up against hyper-saturated green ones. Peacocks and guinea fowl saunter about olives and cacti.
Valentine and Francis have strong ideas and a confident touch. They met at art school close to 35 years ago, are avid collectors and together own the vintage clothing and accessories stores Shag. With their gardening, as with their collecting, they chart their own course.
Jeremy Valentine and Grant Francis in their garden. Credit: Simon Schluter But they know when to pull back too. Their garden is unique and distinctive but it never feels over-worked.
It is in Clydesdale in central Victoria, about halfway between Daylesford and Castlemaine, and Valentine once wrote about how when they saw the property from the road almost a year before it went up for sale, and they were “instantly smitten”. Loading It has a mid-1800s hand-hewn stone farmhouse, an assortment of historic farm buildings and 6.5 hectares of land.
While they have transformed the place in the 11 years since they bought, they have been careful to retain the atmospheric, understated tone that first caught their eye. “If you tune into the atmosphere here and what the place is telling you, you can’t make mistakes,” Valentine says. But many of us do, and this place is a great lesson in how to create a garden that is exciting but also mellow.
Even for Valentine and Francis, who split their time between here and Melbourne, it has been a learning curve. They have been careful to retain the atmosphere that first drew them to the property. Credit: Simon Schluter.
