In an exclusive extract from our garden editor Will Dangar’s latest book, Natural Order, we showcase a personal project from SJB’s Adam Haddow. Speaking with Dangar Barin Smith co-director Tom Smith, we see how the home takes urban gardening to a whole new level.
Conceived with the intent of exploring the future of urban spaces, this small inner-city terrace has adopted mixed-use principles. The multi-award-winning home of SJB architect Adam Haddow and partner Michael Combs uses planting to challenge norms and subvert traditional expectations, resulting in a series of spaces that constantly surprise and delight, while reframing the concept of the city garden.
Architect Adam Haddow has created an experimental space packed with charm and personality. What were the key inspirations for the landscaping?
Tom Smith: Adam and Michael have a beautiful, lush landscape painting in their living room, nearly four metres long, called Eora by artist Nicholas Harding, who won the Wynne Prize in 2022. The painting depicts native bushland with dense tree ferns and cabbage palms. It was such an important piece that they wanted to celebrate by riffing off the work’s native planting for their own garden scheme.
Were there learnings from previous projects you could apply here?
Tom Smith: We had worked with Adam before on his rooftop garden in Cleveland Street, Redfern, so key principles surrounding the demands and requirements of this type of site had already been established. But here, with the smaller footprint, the opportunity was different, and we worked hard to do more with less—finding simple ideas that could make generous, impactful gestures, as well as those that could provide quirky, intimate moments.
There is a playfulness to the building in terms of window shapes, materials and coloured forms, which are enhanced by the plants. Were you able to be equally offbeat in the planting selections?
Tom Smith: We strove to support the architecture and soften its geometry with plants spilling from the toybox-style planters integrated into the façade—haphazard growth at different levels brings its own energy. We also defied logic with a large tree fern growing from a suspended position on the second storey. It was planted as a six-metre stick and has since flourished, now forming part of the canopy at the top of the house alongside the roof garden. At one point, we even sought a 15-metre palm tree, imagining the contrast of the biggest palm with the smallest house, but the result we achieved is unique and certainly noticed by passers-by.
But this isn’t the only large tree in the project, is it?
Tom Smith: Adam and Michael were keen to include a sizeable Queensland bottle tree in the roof garden, which required substantial engineering to provide the necessary soil depth for both stability and healthy growth. It acts as a natural sculpture and a visual anchor for the roof garden, around which everything else pivots.
The roof garden is a tiny oasis, an exercise in reductive thinking. Was it hard to design the landscaping when there were so few moves to make?
Tom Smith: The 30-square-metre space was cleverly planned by Adam to include a BBQ and bench, an outdoor sink and some seating. The massive skylight, which brings light into the shower room below, is feathered with bower vine. A small section of lawn provides a subtle gesture, while generous swathes of Muehlenbeckia drape over the Japanese red- painted railings and weave around the sculptural exhaust stacks. Everything is highly intentional and condensed, and, as a result, makes a powerful statement.
How does this garden relate to the broader cityscape?
Tom Smith: The house is in Surry Hills, an area of mixed retail, commercial and residential buildings. This garden, with its mature trees and extensive native planting, introduces a certain wildness in an urban setting and demonstrates what can be achieved when there is the will to do so. With planting at every level, the building contributes positively to the streetscape, which is something Adam strives to do in every aspect of his work.
From inside, the house provides views through to garden pockets, and there is the sense that greenery pops up and weaves its way into and around the building. Is the planting behaving as you imagined as it grows and expands?
Tom Smith: Very much so. The view of a palm from the bedroom window, a small garden of greenery accessed from the living room, and plant tendrils curling around the windows and skylight edges all give the sense that the house is wrapped in nature. Even the circular shower room is filled with lush foliage—so while the house is undeniably urban in context, the natural world plays a key role.
Was this a hard project to conceive as a scheme that’s more three-dimensional in nature than most traditional gardens?
Tom Smith: The project required a lot of trust and collaborative effort, with a shared understanding of a contemporary approach to native planting and a desire to innovate and push the boundaries of what garden spaces can be. It was challenging to plan as we normally do, but the many lessons learned along the way made the outcome a real joy.
This feature originally appeared in est magazine issue #58: ‘Creative Minds at Home‘.
