Charlie Albone shares his love of gardening and tips for creating your dream green space in new book – The West Australian

I remember the moment I fell in love with gardening: it was the first time I saw a small flower with snakeskin-like petals.

I was 18 and juggling two jobs as a painter and decorator during the day, and pulling pints at The Crown in the evening. Late one night, I witnessed a car accident a black Vauxhall Calibra, driven by a drunk driver, crashed into a pillar at the entry to a Mr Phillip Bindings house in Winscombe, a small village in the south-west of England. I knocked on the door the following day and, although I didnt catch the number plate, I described the unusual car to Mr Binding. He appreciated my assistance, and asked if I knew of anyone who could help him in his garden on weekends.

I was trying to save money to travel to Australia, so I jumped at the chance to earn a little more. My first job was collecting a bucket of sheep poo and mixing it with natural yoghurt, leaving this wonderful concoction out in the sun and then painting it on the newly repaired front pillar to help age the stonework. What a start in landscaping!

One day, I failed miserably while trying to cut perfectly manicured stripes in Mr Bindings grass with the lawnmower. But rather than shouting at me for destroying his lawn, he took me over to a sloping area of the lawn that he called the rise. Then he knelt down and showed me the most incredible flower I had ever seen. It was a snakes head fritillary (Fritillaria meleagris), popping up through the grass. The texture of the inky purple bloom looked just like a snakes skin. My awe at this amazing thing growing from the ground sparked something in me it was the moment I knew that I wanted to become a gardener.

I was born in Hong Kong in the 1980s. At that time, the bustling city was dirty and polluted. My love for landscapes actually began in Hong Kong. I spent the first 12 years of my life in the small fishing village of Sai Kung, in a relatively rural area, and this is probably why I think of Hong Kong as a green space rather than an enormous city.

When Hong Kong was handed back to China, we moved back to the United Kingdom and the rolling hills of Somerset. I enjoyed riding around the English countryside on horseback. This certainly influenced my love of the outdoors and my appreciation for nature.

My mother, who is a keen gardener, tried on multiple occasions to get me interested in the gardening life. Once she offered to pay me five pence per piece to move rocks around her garden for a project she was doing. She also tried to get my siblings and me to help in the vegetable patch, mainly to show us the paddock-to-plate ethos this backfired when we were served oversized and incredibly tough vegetable-stuffed marrow. Im happy to say that my move into gardening has propelled me into the favourite-child position in our family, and now one of my most cherished things to do is spend time out in my garden with my mum when she comes over to visit.

With a love of the outdoors, minimal gardening skills but a rapidly growing passion for horticulture, I packed my suitcase and made Australia home for my gap year. I did all the things backpackers do drank too much, laid around getting sunburnt and did rubbish jobs for a bit of extra cash. I was having a beer with a mate one night when he mentioned his brother needed some help doing garden maintenance the next day, and was I interested? Of course I said yes, expecting that I would be mowing lawns, deadheading roses or pruning shrubs. However, a rude shock awaited me I spent the whole day with a leaf blower in my hand, moving leaves from one end of the Coca-Cola factory car park in Parramatta to the other. Im not sure if there is another nation that has a bigger infatuation with leaf blowers than Australia!

Towards the end of my gap year, I realised that Australia was the place for me and working outdoors was something I loved doing. I knew that I didnt want to hold a leaf blower my whole life, but I was keen to find out how I could work in horticulture.

I spent a year in England, working out how to get back to Australia. During this time, I built a garden for my mother. It included a raised patio with recycled paving slabs, bricks and anything else I could find, plus a feature flower garden and a natural pond. The pond took ages, as I found it difficult to get an even water level. It was fun working alongside my mum, and throughout the project the bud of interest in gardening was swelling (pardon the pun!). Not long after, I ended up back in Australia on a student visa.

I studied full-time at Ryde TAFE and achieved a diploma of horticulture and landscape design. The course was excellent, but, in all honesty, theres nothing like hands-on learning out in the field. This is where I really learned about how plants grow, what they need and how just one element such as too much sun, slightly waterlogged soil, prevailing wind or sandy soil can make a huge difference to plant growth. You cant be a good landscape designer if youre not a gardener first.

Once I finished TAFE, I started to focus on my own business, Inspired Exteriors, full-time. I had plenty of work and was designing and building a wide range of gardens. I didnt have a personal style at the time, but I loved creating different themes and styles of garden to suit each individual client. The early years really were about observing and learning, and I found that I enjoyed this and could quickly apply the lessons I had learned.

I was a member of the Australian Institute of Landscape Designers and Managers, and out of the blue I received an email that went out to all of its members asking if we wanted to audition for a role as a presenter for a television show. So I got my housemate to film me at one of my projects, and sent in the video. To cut a long story short, the show was Selling Houses Australia and I got the job! With no previous television experience, I was actually terrible at the start. However, we did go on to film the show for 13 years, so I must have got better at it.

Working on television is an amazing experience, and it has given me so much: the ability to inspire others to try gardening, as well as a way to travel the country and meet all types of people. But hands-down the best thing television has done for me is to introduce me to my wife.

After two seasons of Selling Houses Australia, I was asked to host a new show called The Party Garden. While the premise of the show was great renovate a garden and then have a big party in the new space the reality was a bit of a disaster. However, interior designer Juliet Love was chosen as my co-host. I had seen pictures of Juliet and I thought she was perfection. Her first impression of me wasnt great, though when I tried to make a joke about my car and the relative size of my manhood, it fell flat but we are married now with two children, so something must have worked in my favour!

Our show had one season, but Selling Houses Australia continued on. By this time I had become a qualified tradesman and supervisor, and through my business I was designing and building lots of gardens. I was happy, as I could work in two different fields. Television is a quick in-and-out gig, working towards high-impact, often budget-conscious elements of a garden; on the flip side, creating a garden from nothing for my private clients allows me to spend time getting to know them, find out what they want from a garden and implement it in a manner that completely changes the way they live. Both are rewarding in different ways.

The annual RHS Chelsea Flower Show in London has long been a pinnacle of garden design and innovation, and its every gardeners dream to exhibit there. In 2013, my brothers wedding happened to coincide with the event, so I hatched a plan to film a magazine-style show for the Lifestyle Channel, which gave me access to all the gardens (usually off-limits to everyone apart from judges and esteemed guests!). Walking through these amazing gardens that had been created in just three weeks and seeing how even the smallest detail can have an impact on the whole atmosphere of a space had a profound effect on me. From that moment on, I designed gardens in a completely different way.

I was back the following year to film a documentary about Australian garden designer Phillip Johnson and his team going for gold at the show. The garden was epic: a huge billabong with cascading waterfalls, a grotto and a floating studio, and it deservedly won best in show.

During this visit, I met larger-than-life landscaper Mick Conway, who was helping out on the Australian build. We became friends and went on to build three gardens together at Chelsea. The first was for a hero of mine, Alan Titchmarsh, who was a pioneer of gardening on television in the United Kingdom. Helping on his build felt like a real honour. I worked closely with designer Kate Gould, and it was great to be digging, planting and pruning each plant to perfection. The thing about Chelsea is that you are surrounded by people who are the best at what they do, and they are more than happy to share their knowledge. I love that about horticulture there is a real sense of camaraderie.

The following year, 2015, was my first attempt at a garden of my own at Chelsea. It was thrilling to be responsible for such a large show garden on the main avenue of the showgrounds. In all honesty, I thought I would only ever get one shot at making a garden in this magical place, so I decided to create one that really meant something to me. I designed a garden called The time in-between which was dedicated to my father, who passed away when I was 17. This was my chance to tell him about what happened in my life after he died it was a space to reconnect.

The garden was split into three sections. The first was a path wide enough to fit the whole family side-by-side, meandering through flowering plants I grow in my own garden at home. In the central part, a water feature slowly filled, stalled and then rapidly emptied, which replicated the emotions felt when someone close to you passes away. The final section at the rear of the garden was a sunken courtyard surrounded by solid sandstone pillars, each one representing an important person in my life. In the centre of the courtyard was a firepit that represented my wife and the fire within me, and the planting here became more foliage-based to direct the energy inwards and allow us to sit and really connect.

It was a hugely personal journey for me, from coming up with the garden concept and pitching it to companies for sponsorship, to organising the team to install it. The process was incredibly intense and stressful. Luckily, we made a TV show about it so I can now enjoy the memory of the garden, and my children will be able to watch the show when they get older.

We were awarded the second-highest medal: Silver Gilt. It was an amazing achievement! The thing I love about Chelsea is the feedback from the judges who hand out the medals. You are judged very strictly against the brief you have submitted with your application; not only do you have to meet that brief, but you also have to be horticulturally correct. For example, if you plant something in the shadow of a tree but it requires more sun, you get marked down. I was marked down for the ground cover between my stepping stones, as the judges said it needed to be a bigger clump so it wouldnt dry out. It really is a mix of science and art.

A second chance

When I was invited back to submit a design for the show the following year, my wife couldnt believe that I was even going to consider it after what the last one had taken out of me. But I wasnt going to let the experience slip away, so back to the drawing board I went. I wanted to do something completely different. My first garden was a loose, flowing, emotive space, so this time it would be formal and tight.

I decided to design a space for a busy couple to retreat to after work, with a sunken lawn surrounded by layers of hedging and large box-head trees, plus a small courtyard with a feature garden bed connected to a pavilion with a floating roof. To tie the various areas together, a copper water rill ran around the courtyard, down the steps and around the lower sunken lawn. The project had its ups and downs, and I was let down by the company that supplied the copper for the water rill. Every garden at the show is built with precision, so when the copper arrived and the measurements were off, the joints were wonky and ugly black silicone had been used to fill the gaps, I was in despair. We spent days trying to fix the issues, and ultimately we ran out of time to go over the garden in detail and tweak the tiniest elements. Despite this, we were awarded another Silver Gilt medal and I can say that I am the only Australian-based landscape designer to exhibit at Chelsea two years in a row.

Opening new doors

Soon after this, I was asked to design and implement a project in Hong Kong, which led to me being introduced to the owners of the Shangri-La Hotel group. They were impressed with my efforts and asked me to help with the redesign of the lobby of their flagship hotel in Singapore.

The famous Shangri-La Singapore has a huge six metre by nine metre wall above the lobby bar, and the Japanese interior designer envisioned a new rock wall alive with planting. Thats where I came in. The design process was fun, and I oversaw the build. Our stonemason, Callum Gray, and my team created a stunning piece of which we are very proud.

The Chelsea connection has sent me all over the globe, and I was even invited to design a garden at the worlds largest garden expo in Beijing. With just 24 hours notice, I drafted and submitted a design, and then watched from Australia as an excellent team of builders pulled it together.

The schedule I had to keep to ensure that all of these garden projects were delivered on time and to a high standard, as well as flying all over the country to film Selling Houses Australia, was taking its toll. I missed my family and they missed me, and my boys were starting to ask why I had to leave so often. So when I got a call from Russell Palmer, the executive producer of TV show Better Homes and Gardens, I was interested. The pitch to become the new landscaper on the hit show got me excited I would be telling stories and inspiring people to get into gardening, just like Phillip Binding and Alan Titchmarsh had done for me. It also meant that I could be at home a lot more. Although I knew that I would miss the team at Selling Houses Australia, going out on a high and moving towards a better quality of life for my family won hands-down.

So here I am now, writing this book in the hope that it will inspire you to give gardening a go. Go outside and take in your garden. Close your eyes and think about what your dream garden would look like, how it would make you feel and how it might change your life. Hopefully, youll pick up a few tips and tricks in this book to make that dream a reality.

Garden of Your Dreams by Charlie Albone, $39.99, is out August 2, via Murdoch Books

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Charlie Albone shares his love of gardening and tips for creating your dream green space in new book - The West Australian