Want to increase your home value? Try this
Gardens are often indistinguishable from one another. There are the same plants framed by box hedges with a couple of trees strategically placed in the manicured front lawn. While the houses are often different, either period or contemporary, the gardens have a sense of sameness. However, there are those who search for something that’s unique and spend time looking for unusual and often rare plants.
Landscape designer Sam Egan, director of Sam Egan Gardens, understands what type of plants are suited for a project, be it a townhouse or for a sprawling garden. Sometimes, a client will offer their preferences. In the case of one client, living in a large period home in the Melbourne suburb of Kew, the brief included a garden with “botanical intensity”.
While most people have a budget in mind when building or renovating a house, these figures often don’t include the potential cost of designing a garden.Credit: Will Salter
Egan sourced a four-metre-high cork oak (used for spirits) from a supplier who had reclaimed the mature tree from a rural property. With a 20-centimetre trunk, it would fit perfectly on the edge of the site. He also sourced a carob tree. While the word “rare” is often seen as synonymous with a substantial monetary figure, it was more about the time spent sourcing these trees than the money.
“Even the rarer species can generally be sourced, but it’s often more difficult finding mature, established plants such as copper beech trees, particularly if you are after one that’s several metres in height,” says Egan. For the garden in Kew, he saw the importance of planting established trees, spending $35,000 on seven trees, which included hiring a crane.
Kerms oak (Quercus coccifera), an evergreen oak native to the Mediterranean.Credit: Image courtesy of Ben O’Brien, Elswood Rare Plants
“You’re paying for the speed of providing a canopy that offers shade. You don’t have to wait years to create that sense of place. It’s certainly worth the investment,” he said.
The cork tree Egan found for the garden in Kew cost a couple of thousand dollars.
“You are paying for the time it takes to grow these plants, particularly those who are after a more established garden from the start,” he says.
Real estate agent Jock Langley, director of Abercrombys, can’t provide an exact figure for a garden that comes with rare and unusual plants but estimates that if it’s done well, “it could make an extra 5 to 10 per cent difference in the sale price. Particularly, when you’re buying a small inner-city plot, you need a garden to have a point of difference, and rare and more exotic plants are certainly noticed by buyers,” says Langley.
Ben O’Brien, who owns Elswood Rare Plants in Crookwell on the Southern Tablelands in NSW, is often contacted by buyers looking for something more unusual for their gardens – a Chilean soapbark tree, a Franklin tree, a five-lobe maple or a Faber’s maple. O’Brien started collecting rare plants 10 years ago, propagating plants that he couldn’t find in most nurseries.
An acorn from a canyon live oak, an evergreen native to western North America. Credit: Image courtesy of Ben O’Brien, Elswood Rare Plants
“What started as a hobby morphed into a business,” says O’Brien, who sells his plants, generally in 30-centimetre pots, online.
As with Egan, O’Brien has a penchant for oak trees, many of which originate from North America and some of which are hybrids. Many of the 30-centimetre pots sell for $35, while an extremely old species of a camellia is sold as seeds. Something rare, a sapling in a small pot, may be closer to the $200 mark.
“If something is grafted, it can add to the expense,” says O’Brien, pointing out a rare magnolia. “There’s always a market for the box hedge, but I think people miss out by not having a few rare plants in their garden.”
He finds it difficult to put an exact monetary figure on how much value a garden filled with rare plants adds.
“Rare and more unusual trees and plants certainly create a point of difference and a strong impression on people’s minds if that property is on the market and the other gardens have similar gardens with the same plants.”
Acer pentaphyllum, which is native to China and critically endangered in the wild.Credit: Image courtesy of Ben O’Brien from Elswood Rare Plants
Tim Entwisle, former director and chief executive of the Royal Botanic Gardens in Melbourne, has seen nurseries reduce their more unusual plants for sale.
“A number of nurseries offering rare plants have closed. It’s easier to sell more popular plants, with people wanting to be sure that what they buy will grow, avoiding the risk of failure,” Entwisle says.
Although these days Entwisle is writing books and leading garden tours overseas, he is also a patron of a national organisation known as the Plant Trust, under which individuals grow specific and often rare species in their gardens to encourage their continuation.
For many, a garden still consists of the stock standard offering of plants. However, there are fortunately still a few who enjoy the task of seeking out the rare, unusual and more adventurous, what Sam Egan’s client’s brief referred to as “botanical intensity”.
This intensity can also bring financial rewards.
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