A florist's garden — Beechmont

Jane is visiting a 10-acre estate in the Dandenong Ranges where the owner, Melbourne florist Cherrie Miriklis-Pavlou, enjoys reconnecting with nature – as well as growing some of the more unusual flowers and foliage that inspire her creative craft.

“It’s like therapy for the soul,” says Cherrie, who incorporates beautiful big limbs and different textures into her dramatic arrangements and installations. “Having those different types of flowers and foliage allows us to create arrangements with that point of difference.”

There are formal gardens and rambling expanses filled with native and exotic plants. The previous owner planted a lot of rhododendrons, including some unusual Australian species, the Vireya Rhododendrons, which flourish in the cool, moist hilltop climate. There are also red waratahs, frothy white viburnums, lime euphorbias, pink witch hazel (Loropetalum cv.), lilacs and lots of different-coloured maples and azaleas.

While Cherrie runs her city shop, the garden is managed by horticulturist Eddie Wasbutzki, who also has extensive experience as a florist.

He loves experimenting with new cultivars so is well placed to advise on suitable plantings, such as new forms of hellebores that do better as a cut flower, such as Helleborus ‘Anna’s Red’ and Helleborus ‘Molly’s White’; they have recently put in 60 of each. Other mass plantings include Daphne ‘Perfume Princess’ (Daphne odora x bholua), which Eddie says has a bigger flower and is more fragrant.

One of Cherrie’s favourite parts of the garden is the former tennis court, now transformed into a sunken garden where the old wire fences now host climbing clematis and arches of yellow-flowering Kerria japonica ‘Pleniflora’ contrast with clipped hedges and spiky cordylines. The whole area is enclosed by tall shrubs of hydrangea and rhododendron, with Eucalypts and conifers beyond, created a peaceful, protected hideaway.

Cherrie collects a range of different blooms from the garden and shows Jane how she creates a ‘typical garden-style vase arrangement’.

She half-fills a tall vase with water and adds some bleach, sugar and vinegar, which she finds helps keep the water clean and extend the flowers’ vase life.

Cherrie cuts woody stems on an angle and then cuts them lengthwise, splitting the stem into four cross sections, which she says helps the stem take up water.

She starts with some green-flowered viburnum then adds lilac, placing each one to highlight its natural shape, followed by woolly adenanthos, then filling with long stems of pale pink sweet peas, white ranunculus, then finally a few red Californian poppies for colour contrast.


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