Gordon Ford: The Natural Australian Garden

For too long, Australians have been dominated by European gardening trends. Gordon Ford, like no other landscape designer before him, mastered the natural Australian style.

Australia has unique conditions and, in terms of our indigenous species, this ancient continent can boast high levels of floristic integrity quite unknown to Europeans.

Gordon Ford was early influenced by the English natural style landscape school of the eighteenth century. But his great skill has been to work with Australia’s natural elements and to develop gardens that not only honored the rugged beauty of the Australian landscape, but did so in a way that captured its apparent timelessness – his hardens look as if they have always been there.

Long revered as a landscaper, carrying on in the tradition of Ellis Stones and Edna Walling, Gordon Ford is now recognized as one of Australia’s leading contemporary ‘design visionaries’.

In shaping our visual world, Gordon focused on the essential balance between mass and void in his designs. This balance of the natural elements of rocks, water, trees and other plants achieves a timeless harmony, so that we feel totally satisfied but uncertain s to where Mother Nature starts and Gordon Ford finishes.