Casey Lister: Stunning cottage aesthetic on show in East Fremantle backyard

Can you grow a cottage garden in WA? The answer is a resounding yes. In my time I have visited gardens filled with rambling roses, tall spikes of hollyhocks, waves of blooming poppies and drifts of daffodils. It is a common misconception that the Perth climate makes cottage gardening impossible. Provided we pick tough plants, our dreams of quaint, wild backyards filled with flowers, herbs and vegetables, are entirely within reach. And nowhere is this more evident than in the East Fremantle backyard belonging to Julie Excell, whose garden epitomises everything I love about the cottage aesthetic. On the morning of my visit, the winter sun casts a golden light over mounds of yarrow, wormwood and self-sown Californian poppies. Apple trees, crepe myrtles and a weeping mulberry stand bare, waiting to burst into bud. A honeysuckle creeps along the back fence and a plane tree drops its leaves onto the neatly mowed lawn below it. “We’ve been here 29 years,” Julie says. “The garden was just grass: not even grass, really. Mostly sand and a few fruit trees. Pretty much everything in here we’ve planted. I brought the plane tree home in the back of my little car.” Julie’s garden straddles the difficult line between order and chaos that typifies a true cottage garden. Her trees are artfully pruned (she’s even pruned her rosemary bushes into graceful cloud formations) and her garden is neat and tidy, but her approach is one of minimal intervention — stepping back and allowing the plants to do their thing. When her annuals finish flowering, she leaves them to dry, then throws the spent plants back into the garden to set seed. “I just chuck a stem with a seed pod at the end in the garden,” she tells me, indicating her peony poppies. The result is a garden filled with plants growing exactly where they want to be. In one border, pincushion flowers, seaside daisies, catmint and Verbena bonariensis rub shoulders. In another, an understory of true geraniums and Dutch irises spreads in the dappled shade of a crepe myrtle. “It’s a bit of everything — it was never planned as a particular style, it just developed, and it’s always changing,” Julie says. A plant collector, Julie has sourced varieties of cottage-garden plants I’ve not come across. With increasing envy I spot Chinese foxgloves, a dark-blue plumbago, clary sage and cardoons — all thriving. “I got all my salvias years ago from a nursery in Perth foothills,” she says, as I ogle each in turn, making a mental note to nip back in spring for cuttings. In so many ways, Julie’s garden is the kind I aspire to — rambling and wild, a collection of beautiful blooms and nurtured plants, with (one of my own great life ambitions) a main bedroom addition plopped right in the centre, sitting quietly underneath the plane tree. “We built it so we could wake up and look out at the garden,” Julie says with a smile. It’s a very good move indeed.