Finding landscape inspiration for all seasons

AS the colder months settle in, landscape designer Peter Shaw knows winter is anything but a quiet season in the garden.

With decades of experience in horticulture and as co-owner of Ocean Road Landscaping, Shaw has spent years working with coastal conditions and encourages gardeners to make the most of the cooler months rather than waiting for spring.

“You just don’t know what the next season is going to bring,” he said. “If you wait to plant in September, all of a sudden if it’s a dry spring you’ve missed the winter rain.”

It’s also the ideal time, he says, for what he calls a “squint test”.

 

“Have a good long think about your garden,” Shaw said. “Sit on a chair where you can get a good perspective and just visualise it.

“By squinting your eyes you’re just seeing the core details.”

For Shaw, that slower, more considered approach to landscaping has been shaped over a lifetime in horitculture – and by a much earlier starting point.

When his parents handed him a small patch of lawn to landscape as a teenager, it sparked a lasting connection to plants and design that would eventually become his career.

 

When it came time to choose an apprenticeship, horticulture felt like a natural fit.

“I had a really strong connection with horticulture, plants and gardening,” Shaw said.

That early interest led him to take on landscaping jobs on

the side, before growing the work into Ocean Road Landscaping, which he runs with his wife Simone.

Shaw still credits his parents with instilling that original sense of curiosity, but says staying inspired requires stepping away from the day-to-day to explore other gardens across Australia and beyond.

“As you get older and you’ve done something for a long time, you don’t have the same energy,” Shaw said. “You need to turn the brain off so that it can do its work in the background…and all of a sudden you work out a solution.”

He also draws energy from the young landscapers coming through his business.

 

“I love their work and that’s helped me step back from the day-to-day to see the big picture and pick up their creativity and energy,” Shaw said.

His design philosophy draws heavily from the natural world, especially the coastal environment that surrounds his home in Anglesea.

“We need to reflect what’s around us,” Shaw said. “Even the coastline itself is never in a straight line, so we can work with natural shapes and curves.”

He believes nature itself offers the clearest direction.

“Nature is trying to tell you what it can do,” he said. “Following that is a clue.”

 

That thinking carries through to plant selection, where he works extensively with native and indigenous species for their ability to adapt to seasonal shifts.

“These plants flourish in our climate,” Shaw said. “They also invite native animals and insects back into gardens.”

At his Anglesea property, Sunnymeade, the seasonal shift means turning attention to pruning and renewal.

Now, he said, is a practical time to cut back, add mulch and prepare for warmer months.

“Sometimes with some of the woodier plants, it can be time to move them along and make space for new growth,” Shaw said.

The garden is deeply personal and is layered with family history and meaning.

“It is collectively a lovely place,” Shaw said. “Everywhere I look there’s something of us and our history.

 

“My wife Simone’s ceramics, things the kids have made, [they] all come together to make the whole thing a bit of a joy.”

Some of the older trees he inherited are now beginning to decline, prompting thoughts of succession planting. While that comes with a sense of loss, it also brings a renewed sense of possibility.

Shaw values balance, too, often blending native and exotic species. A deciduous tree outside his front door, recommended by a late friend, for example, shades the house in summer and lets in sunlight in winter.

“They’ve both got a place,” Shaw said. “You can’t take away someone’s love of daffodils because it reminds them of their nana.

“It’s very personal. People plant a memory. It’s deeply human to be connected to a plant through another human.”