Oak Cottage
Macedon
A cottage garden rebuilt around a kept hundred year old English oak at Oak Cottage, a private home in Macedon, an hour's drive north of Melbourne, where the brief was to frame the original 1900s weatherboard facade with a naturalistic garden true to the house's era and sympathetic to the bush around it. Before the work there was a large lawn and, as The Design Files described it, a hodgepodge of unhappy plants. The new garden was planted in April 2022 for its owner, Virginia, and built by Macedon Ranges Garden Services, with winding paths of granite sand linking the sitting and dining places and steps cut from basalt boulders.
The plants go in in large drifts for seasonal impact, the sunny beds inspired by the bush reserve over the road, with a woodland, an outdoor dining area, a dry garden and a perennial border as separate pockets. The picture is the spring frame of four seasons of the same view in the designer's post: Allium Purple Rain floating over catmint, lamb's ear, Salvia Caradonna and red valerian, two cane chairs on the granite sand, and the gums of the reserve behind the fence. Tim Pilgrim Gardens publishes the garden as Oak Cottage.
Tim Pilgrim Gardens
Tim Pilgrim Gardens is a small garden design practice in Central Victoria led by Tim Pilgrim, known for naturalistic cottage style gardens that blend the traditional and the modern, the edible and the ornamental. Pilgrim trained in horticulture and worked at the Diggers Club's Garden of St Erth and with Paul Bangay before starting his own practice.
Tim Pilgrim Gardens (@t.p_gardens), at @oakcottage.macedon. Also tagged @virginiarosewilson, @gemmola and @evegwilson.
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.