In Conversation with Myles Baldwin and Sunnie D'Elton-Howard

Open Journal (OJ): I’ve heard that your gardening journey stretches back to a fern garden you made for your parents when you were 15, leading to an apprenticeship at the Royal Botanic Garden Sydney?

Myles Baldwin Design (MBD): Oh wow! That’s going back a bit. Yes, four years at the Royal Botanic Gardens developed into the role of Head Gardener at Bronte House. We launched Bronte House to the public in 2001 with approximately 8000 people turning up and that, along with the publicity around what we had created there over the years came the launch of Myles Baldwin Design. From there we went straight into working on lots of really beautiful big old heritage properties.

OJ: You definitely specialise in the heritage side of the industry?

MBD: Yes, my passion is for those big gorgeous mid-1800s to Art Deco houses. That was a huge part of the business and, as the horticultural world became a little more interesting in the early 2000s, people began to catch up with the type of work I’d been doing with big loud plants like at the Botanic Gardens and I was very fortunate, given the timing, that I was able to bring that to the industry. All this really amazing gardensque stuff.

OJ: Then architecture caught up too.

MBD: Yes. All those fabulous things you used to see on historical properties became cool again. Modern-day architecture is making allowance for all those wonderful plants to be fitted within.

OJ: How has that informed some of your more recent work?

MBD: In Melbourne, we are working on 97 Alma Road, St Kilda East with Neometro and Kerstin Thompson Architects (KTA) in St Kilda where all the great palm trees and everything else we see in the area is like revisiting that historical grandeur that’s coming back around again. Across the waterfront and even St Kilda Botanical Gardens and all the art deco architecture, even the old apartments along Acland Street that are so glamorous in a ‘land that time forgot’ kind of way, the area perfectly aligns with the rediscovery of the gardening references I was trained in. My own experiences have become popular. Haha

OJ: When everyone else caught up though, you would have had a very established portfolio in that heritage space…

MBD: We did. We had supply chains for the right kind of materials, we knew how to crane all those really big plants in, how to source them, lift them and handle them so that was great too. Our studio has emerged from a place of heritage and leery, gorgeous plants and we’ve pushed it. and that’s actually how we got into Melbourne. We started with big Sydney gardens, like Elizabeth Bay and Bellevue Hill, and that fed back into contemporary architecture and saw us work on our first Melbourne project in 2008 on a mid-1800s house on a casual half acre in Walsh Street, South Yarra.

OJ: When did you first start working alongside architects?

MBD: Right at the start. So when we did Bronte House, one of the first people through was Nick Tobias of Tobias Partners. Between him and people like Ian Moore and heritage architects like Clive Lucas, even Luigi Rosselli came passed, all these guys got really excited by what they saw — the Royal Botanic Gardens squished down into a residential setting. When we launched, the architects immediately came asking for this “new idea” to be incorporated into their architecture.

Legislation and councils are also driving a resurrection of focus on gardens by driving the green aspect and encouraging them instead of continuing to maximise floor plans with more and more rooms.

OJ: Then we start thinking about how the gardens enhance architecture and vice versa. Sightlines, outlooks, privacy, natural light, colour ways etc. It’s all entwined.

MBD: That’s it. In the 90s, when we were all about maximising floor space you’d have a view onto your neighbour’s fence. But this integration is leading to bigger architectural thinking. When we work with developers and have much more spatial consideration, we really think about how to integrate courtyards, how to activate the boundary etc.

OJ: How are some of these considerations coming into 97 Alma Road, St Kilda East? There is already a verdant, botanical streetscape with the established trees and gardens across the road but then the architecture is also bringing in the essence of those grand old mansions. How are you addressing that context?

MBD: We have these wonderful opportunities to create this idea of the village green. Some of the development’s townhouses look out onto the eastern boundary and the existing Chinese elms. Then we’ve got this playful opportunity where we can have these lovely integrated long stairs that take you up into the apartments and they almost touch on those New York stoops where people sit and have a chat. We are cutting through the corridors of the property and really enhancing the buildings, these big mansions, by accentuating that they open up onto the park. We have phoenix sylvestris to define some of the avenues too. There is also a cafe planned for downstairs which will bring a really lively atmosphere. We’re adding to that St Kilda personality that everyone laments has been lost by helping to bring back that verdant activation.

OJ: That personality hangs on somehow though I think, especially given how gentrified the area has become in places, there’s still a subtle presence of that golden era, like its dormant, waiting to be resurrected.

MBD: I hope so. St Kilda’s been my base of operations out of Melbourne for 16 years, so I’ve really come to know and understand the romance of its buildings. The St Kilda Botanic Gardens too with its palms and succulents, a clashing of plants that we’ve tried to drag across into our design for 97 Alma Road.

Another part of the design, aside from the village green, is the development’s laneways. The way they’ve been put together around the apartments and townhouses leans into the idea of community. Around St Kilda, you still get the people who use old laundry pots and recycled pots with plants growing out of them and a fun collection of slightly bohemian stuff and transferring that across to the design was a bit of fun. There’s an air of Melrose Place about it. Haha.

We are so fortunate to have a collaborative relationship with Neometro and KTA and also that the architecture lends itself to the entwining of a garden layer. You’ve got these great double-height voids, bay windows and Juliette balconies so we have these opportunities to blend architecture and garden. Our planting schedule has become a curated celebration of that composition and the different experiences residents will have from different floors and outlooks. And also, consideration for what is going to happen in 50 years’ time!

OJ: Thinking about planting, what are some of your ideas for the development?

MBD: Part of the brief was to touch on that old St Kilda glamour that echoes golden-age Hollywood so we’ve definitely got washingtonia and kentia palms and then birch trees for a seasonal shift. We have the big leaf expressions of shrubby plants and tetrapanax, big strelitzia nicolai’s and magnolia. Then there’s a native component with water gums and tristaneopsus laurina. It’s about finding a fine balance between the client brief, what’s best for the project and the legislation involved.

In the private courtyards, there will be different corners of the gardens with different signature planters or trees but there’s still a strength in small patterns of repetition and a focus on seasonal change.

OJ: Is there any botanical treatment beyond the ground plane? Rooftop terraces etc.

MBD: Yes, a big part of the brief was that it called for the cultivation of a sense of community on the roof. The idea of a culinary space emerged, and given vegetable gardens need sunshine which is difficult to achieve in a terraced backyard, the rooftop proved the perfect place. Probably two-thirds of the rooftop at 97 Alma Road has been dedicated to food production. A series of planter boxes, pergolas and drying areas are planned as well as a beautiful BBQ space. At one stage, a conversation with Neometro and KTA churned up the possibility of relocating the community space to the ground plane but the amount of shade meant it wasn’t viable. That’s a great thing though as it means we now have two dedicated community areas.

OJ: That’s great. It means the village green can be retained for other activities like kicking a ball with kids or going for a walk while the rooftop has its own gathering purpose.

MBD: Yes! Football in the tomatoes would never work!

We also have an idea of a drooping, verdant cascading element that adds to the grunginess of St Kilda. We’ve had a bit of fun with them over the years and our approach is a very botanical, horticultural one. There’s such a world of textures and species out there so we often think about dripping plants as creating a kind of tapestry. We have beaumontia grandiflora and rosmarinus, and then climbing up from the other direction is ficus and Boston ivy’s. In that space, you get not only texture but depth. Some of them twist and launch off the wall, others hold close to it. Leaf sizes are all different and flowers burst forth. It goes back to the training I’ve had and what I impart to Sunnie and the team.

OJ: How much involvement do you have once a project is in the construction phase?

MBD: It’s why I’m wearing steel cap boots right now. We follow it all the way through. All the drawings and all that effort invested during the creative phase can be compromised by a couple of guys on site who think planting is good enough. Without that hands-on approach, all that planning can go to waste. Plus it speeds things up for the installation when we’re there to oversee and direct.

OJ: It must be so rewarding too to see all those months, sometimes years of planning come together.

MBD: 100%. I didn’t start all of this to run a company. When people look at our projects, they are amazed by particular trees or plants. We are solely responsible for specimens. We handpick them and oversee planting as that to us is important because that bendy curly thing can only go one way.

OJ: Given free rein, what would be your dream engagement?

MBD: We create horticulturally biased gardens that you can live in. As long as you can tick that box, that you can go into the space and experience wonder, that’s what we do. As a gardener, I have the dream job of working as far south as Huon Valley in Tasmania and then all the way up north in Port Douglas and even Abu Dhabi. Being able to make these botanical combinations and then design them in a way that has great pieces of furniture and you can sit amongst them and enjoy the walk to the front door, that’s it.

Thanks to Myles Baldwin and Sunnie D’Elton-Howard of Myles Baldwin Design. You can see more of MBD's work on their website or Instagram. Words by Tiffany Jade. Feature image by Sharyn Cairns. Find out more about 97 Alma Road by Neometro here.