It’s taken Tim Dyer and Phoebe Gordon more than five years to get their home and garden to this point. Photo: James Coleman.
Normally, if you wandered down the driveway of 40 Chubb Street in Latham, you might expect a curious “Can I help you?” Not this weekend.
‘The Burrow’, as it’s called – in a nod to the Weasley family home in Harry Potter – is the first stop on this year’s Open Gardens spring program.
The volunteer-run organisation was founded in 2015 to give Canberrans the chance to do what many have always secretly wanted to: take a peek into private backyards, while giving owners the pleasure of showing off their hard work.
Over the past decade, Open Gardens has opened more than 100 gardens and raised over $100,000 for charity. This year marks its 10th anniversary, with 10 properties across the ACT opening between now and November.
Phoebe Gordon, a landscape architect, and Tim Dyer, an architect, moved into the Latham property during Canberra’s second COVID lockdown in 2020.
“We had a two-bedroom townhouse with five of us during lockdown,” Tim says.
“We bought this house and renovated it and rented it out, but then after that first lockdown, we just needed somewhere bigger, so we decided to actually move in here rather than have it as an investment.”
When they first took over the block, there wasn’t much to see.
“When we purchased the property, it was a quintessential ex-govie house and garden – all grass, a few small trees and a Hills Hoist out the back,” Tim says.
“But it gave us 900 square metres of blank canvas to create an urban oasis.”
The house was part of a 1960s and 70s planning experiment known as ‘Radburn’, which flipped traditional design by orienting front doors to shared green space and backs to the street. Curtin, Garran, Charnwood and part of Hughes also used the layout.
Initially, the couple planned a significant redesign, but instead, they kept the footprint and turned attention to the garden.
“We wanted to sort of keep the existing house but create a garden around it so you feel like you’re in a bit of a pavilion, with these little sort of garden rooms and spaces,” Phoebe says.
The veggie garden faces a public walkway, but only one case of pumpkins has gone missing. Photo: James Coleman.
Renovations soon took over weekends.
“We started renovating extensively, so we got builders in to pull all the windows out, which meant we went into the second lockdown in winter with no walls,” Tim recalls.
“When we turned the heating on, you could see the house billowing because they just had to put black plastic sheets on the sides.”
They also faced water problems.
“There was a lot of concrete originally, which we removed and replaced with decks and gravel, but we also had massive drainage issues because we’re at the bottom of a water channel. I was pulling the house apart and just watching the water flow under it whenever it rained,” Tim says.
Both sides of the house open up via enormous sliding doors. Photo: James Coleman.
With three young children, fun was a key design goal.
“A big part of it was about wanting to make the garden fun for the kids as well,” Phoebe says.
“We created the creek, so they run up and down it and on the rocks and things like that and watch the fish.”
Tim adds: “I’ve always loved when I went to friends’ houses as a kid and it was a playful garden. We’ve tried to create that for a bit of magic – with little hidden pathways and all the rest of it.”
Even the trampoline has a twist: in summer, it fills with water, attracting frogs and tadpoles. And the chicken coop features gyprock panels on which the kids scribbled during renovations, later cut out and installed behind the nesting boxes.
On the other side, the property faces a public walkway, and the couple planted a vegetable patch to make the most of it.
“We’ve put strawberries along the edge so kids tend to eat them in summer, which is nice,” Phoebe says. “We find that the neighbourhood kids will come over and be like, ‘Oh, what’s that?’, and we’ll be like, ‘It’s broccoli, you can eat it,’ and they’ll eat it. And then the parents will be like, ‘We can never get them to eat broccoli!’
“It creates a bit of community engagement, especially during that second lockdown, the walkway was a real thoroughfare, and even now, everyone’s still stopping and having a chat.”
The trampoline is sunken to prevent mishaps – and also lure frogs. Photo: James Coleman.
After five years of near-weekly effort, the couple is looking forward to opening it up to more visitors.
“We’ve got a few clients who’ve mentioned Open Gardens over the years,” Phoebe says. “We just thought, given what we’ve done here, it’s been a lot of work and it would be nice to share that with people, and be able to talk to people about ideas.”
Visit Open Gardens for more information on its spring season. Gardens are open between 10 am and 4 pm on the listed dates, unless otherwise noted. Entry is free for Open Gardens members, and $10 for visitors aged 18 and above (cash or EFTPOS accepted). No bookings are required.
