A lush garden oasis in Aldgate
This modern country home, with self-contained cottage, in the Adelaide Hills is surrounded by a charming, mature garden.
Through a picket fence gate and wooden arbours lined with creeping vines, a front door encompassed in stained glass opens to a quaint 1920s cottage that has Adelaide Hills charm written all over it.
In the garden, gravel paths lined with box hedges weave through 3367 square metres of mature gardens.
The character of this property is what captivated its owners, who purchased it while they were living in Melbourne during the height of Covid lockdowns, when they couldn’t make the trip over to see it in person.
“We saw it on the internet and put an offer in,” says the owner, who moved with his partner and their two young children.
“We did some due diligence but, ultimately, it was a huge leap of faith.”
Having grown up in England’s West Country the owner and his partner, who grew up in Adelaide, had always planned to make the move from their urban Melbourne property, and the Hills was the perfect sanctuary to escape the strict Victorian lockdowns.
The family settled on their new home in November 2020, but with travel restrictions in place, the house sat vacant for a month until borders opened and they were able to move in just in time for Christmas.
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The main house features four bedrooms and two living areas – one of which was extended by previous owners as well as the light-filled kitchen and dining which connects to an outdoor living area and herb garden.
There is also a newly-refurbished cellar and a self-contained cottage.
Used by the previous owners as a bed and breakfast, the landscaping around the cottage affords it total privacy from the main house – the perfect place to work from home, as the current owners do, surrounded by views of greenery and paths to roam and stretch the legs.
Although they haven’t undertaken any major renovations since moving in six years ago, their focus has been on increasing the energy efficiency and sustainability of the century-old home.
Windows have been replaced with double-glazed glass and re-profiled in some areas to enhance views over the expansive garden and bring the outside in.
Insulation in the roof of the main house and the cottage (and the roof of the cottage itself) has also been replaced, and the home has been modernised inside and out with the installation of new app-controlled smart systems to manage heating, cooling, security as well as the irrigation and water systems.
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The owners also have a mulching and composting process that enables them to redistribute much of the garden waste back into the garden as valuable organic material.
“I noticed when we first arrived that the garden waste was being taken off site, which can be expensive and we’ve got he means to be able to recycle it on site for the good of the garden,” he says.
“We really want to be as sustainable as possible and live within the land that we have and recycle as much as we can.
“Even though it’s an old house – it’s 100 years old – it very much behaves and exists as a modern property in terms of how we manage the systems in the house and garden.
“Everything’s had a sort of smart lens put over it so that we’re using less energy, we’re using less water, we’re recycling as much as we can, we’re keeping our costs down and ultimately leaving less of a footprint.”
Having moved from urban Melbourne with no garden, the owners had to quickly adapt, but now, as they search for a larger piece of land to build on, the garden is what they will miss most.
“It’s been very carefully planted by the previous owners so that as soon as one thing is out of bloom something else is appearing somewhere else and there are constant surprises.”
“Even after being there for six years, there are still surprises where I’ll be wandering around the garden and spot flowering plants for the first time.
“You could be in the middle of the country; it really does feel very peaceful.
The sale of 102 Strathalbyn Road, Aldgate, is being handled by Josh Biggs and Staten Evans of Harris Real Estate.
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