Working outside-in: The Gordon home celebrating its rich natural surrounds

Renovations usually start inside and work themselves outdoors, if at all – and when they do can serve simply as an afterthought to the revamped interiors. Not here.

The owners of this three-level delight in Gordon, on Sydney’s leafy upper north shore, purposefully chose to overhaul the entire property, a decade-long project completed in three phases, the other way round.

They began with the gardens – best described as a “jungle” and “mishmash” – before tackling the entry and lower-ground floors of the muscular 1980 Mediterranean-styled brick house they bought in 2005. The upper-storey bedrooms were done last.

Originally from the cooler climes of New Zealand, the couple viewed Sydney as a city where it made complete sense for their family of six to soak up the outdoors as much as possible.

“We couldn’t believe how mild the winters were and how nice the summers,” they say. “It was logical to renovate [outside] first.”

In a clever move, they enlisted leading landscape designer Dean Herald, whose Rolling Stone Landscapes earned a gold medal at the world-famous Chelsea Garden Show for its entry embracing Australia’s outdoor lifestyle.

At the top of Herald’s to-do list was the creation of discrete habitable areas, such as outdoor rooms, that played to the owner’s brief to transform the garden into somewhere they could spend time day and night, while remaining sympathetic to the existing architecture and environment.

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On one side, he designed a covered, fully equipped kitchen, with a teppanyaki grill and pizza oven, alongside a sunken lounge and fire pit. On the other, he created an outdoor dining room. Perfect for family, perfect for entertaining.

Herald also touched up the existing sinuous, kidney-shaped swimming pool with new bluestone paving and built bold retaining walls behind which he added a “lush and loose” array of plantings to the established garden, which included a towering Phoenix palm.

He introduced Japanese box and murraya hedging, tree ferns, palms, clumping grasses and flaxes as well as various flowering plants and jasmines. Included, too, were lightweight sculptures.

“The idea was to provide a relaxed atmosphere around the harsher lines of [the garden’s] structural components [while maintaining] that traditional, lush Gordon feel,” Herald says. “I wanted to complement, not compete.”

The external work also triggered a conversation between Herald and the design-focused owners about how to deal with the indoor reboot.

“We wanted inside to feel so much like outside,” say the owners.

The plan was to open up the ground floor so that the home’s interior merged seamlessly with the outdoors. Walls were removed, supporting beams inserted, rooms rejigged, spaces rescaled and a frameless bifold glass wall installed to demarcate inside from out.

Herald also formed “a view corridor” that afforded unimpeded prospect from deep within the house across the length of the garden.

Elevating all of this was a keen eye for styling and decor as well as the inclusion of wow appliances, designer fixtures and furniture.

Among them are Wolf ovens, a 4500-litre walk-in fridge, an Inax Japanese-tiled fireplace, a single-cut stone benchtop and inherited Garth Chester Curvesse chairs.

SOLD - $6,860,000

2A Garden Square, Gordon NSW 2072

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The icing was a prized showcase of Australasian artworks, including those of Tom Coley, Kuddtji Tjungurrayi and Linda Bruce.

“Inside was simple when you have a client with incredible taste in architecture and art, good brief and you’re working to match a detailed job you did externally,” Herald says.

Daniel Blagg of Di Jones Lindfield takes the home to auction on August 14 with a guide of $6 million.