The Family Garden
Flinders
The designer's own family garden at Flinders on the Mornington Peninsula, begun in 2016 on an eighteen acre property rolling toward the Southern Ocean that then held a lawn, an olive tree and a few scattered shrubs. All four of the household are horticulturists: Jo Ferguson, her husband Simon Hazel and their two sons. She drew the lines of the paths on the ground, he sculpted the land with his digger in a day, and granitic sand paths now wind through dense plantings of endemic grasses, flowering perennials, native shrubs and succulents to pockets holding a pizza oven and a dining table.
Ferguson calls it a dreamy, whimsical fantasy grassland, and the soil holds water so well that irrigation is rarely needed. A book extract and an open garden listing publish it as The Family Garden, a name her own pages do not carry, and Gardens Illustrated featured it in January 2024 with words by Georgina Reid.
Jo Ferguson
Jo Ferguson is a garden designer at Flinders on the Mornington Peninsula, one of four horticulturists in the household that made this garden, with her husband Simon Hazel and their two sons.
Garden of @joferguson.gardens. Photography @clairetakacs. Words Georgina Reid. Published in @gardens_illustrated.
The picture comes from this post on Instagram, with more in a second post.
Researched August 2026. I credit each piece as carefully as I can; if you know more about this one, message me on Instagram.