There is something familiar in Grant Nimmo’s paintings of lush, forested landscapes. The deeply enriching emotional response to being within the time, the temperature, the sounds, and colours of the natural world. They depict, with a hauntingly beautiful degree of realism, the feeling of being within the complexity of spaces framed within a thickly planted landscape. Their existence today feels almost archival, as if they record an environment increasingly diminishing, still within reach, but only just.

Spaces are connected, overlap, and peek out from behind trees. They shift and bend around the life and depth of the landscape. They are connected.

House in a Garden, is a home for a family with two school-aged children, was conceived as a dwelling within foliage above the landscaped floodplain of the Birrarung. The main living space, divided by the warmth of smoothly cornered timber walls, is elevated to sit within this. The plan is simple and appears expansive. There are two wings with distinctly different agendas. One open and fluid, the other closed and separated. One for living and connecting, the other for sleeping and retreating. At the lower level, the large supporting feet define pockets or eddies within the flowing landscape down to the river. Some extend to the level above, creating voids for taller trees; some are capped below the timber soffit, compressing into a shadowed, quiet space rich with undergrowth.

Every room and vantage is surrounded by foliage. Time is captured through seasonal colour changes. There are outward views, but internally, the experience is contained. Spaces are intimate, with outward glimpses gently curtailed by a slender timber batten screen.

It is this boundary condition that gives the project its character. From some angles, the project appears solid, from others, open, translucent, blurred. At lower ground, it is porous and inviting, with a pathway through the landscape curating a slow approach.

The project was conceived from the inside out, yet there is an obvious appreciation of form and spaces generated around form. The plan appears graphic, the presence externally formal. Internally, spaces are nuanced, layered, and loosely defined. Internal volumes are softened with objects, plants, and niches. They are open yet claimable, broad yet small. Externally solid and defined, internally playful and fluid.

The home’s presence within its landscape reflects a desire for a subtle character, reversing the heavy presence of the previous 1980s Mediterranean Revival home that rendered the old market garden subordinate. This reconnection has been guided by an enriching collaboration with Eckersley’s Garden Architecture, expertly constructed by Comb Construction and Canterbury Landscapes.

Sustainable systems, including solar panels, heat pump hydronic heating/cooling, and domestic hot water, allow an internal connection with the environment, while cross-ventilation between voids offers a purely natural option.

House in a Garden and Nimmo’s paintings were conceived at different times but share a thematic alignment. They exist in different mediums but both attempt to capture the experience of walking through and living within the natural light and abundance of a forest.