Recession or no recession, the demand for big-ticket landscaping is growing - spurred on by a booming local real-estate market and the presence of gardening shows like Canada Blooms, opening in Toronto on Wednesday.
With homeowners spending money as if it grew on the trees they are newly coveting, the million-dollar garden is - even before the snow melts - the season’s hottest home decor trend.
Sometimes the garden ends up being worth more than the house.— Ron Holbrook
“It’s the new status symbol,” says Ron Holbrook, the award-winning Toronto-based landscape architect who is booked through most of 2010 with no job costing less than $200,000 - his bare minimum starting price.
“A fabulous garden is what everyone wants these days.”
To get it, Mr. Holbrook’s Canadian clients - and they include billionaire David Thomson, fashion entrepreneur Joe Mimran, singer Nelly Furtado, media mogul Allan Slaight and an assortment of Reichmans too many to mention - are upping the ante, asking for outdoor rooms as meticulously designed as their home’s (often) deluxe interiors. In them, Mr. Holbrook’s clients are asking for the newest must-have garden accessory - the outdoor fireplace, which extends a summer garden’s enjoyment (especially in Canada) into the cooler months.
For Toronto manufacturer Alan Gozlan’s backyard, Mr. Holbrook started first with a walk-through of the client’s Forest Hill home to ensure a seamless connection with what he was designing outdoors.
“Cost simply didn’t matter,” says Mr. Gozlan. “In fact, I never even looked at the price. [The garden] is something extremely emotional for us and it brings us great enjoyment each time we look at it.”
Incorporating a pre-existing rectangular pool and a mature hedge that came with the property into his design, Mr. Holbrook’s garden expanded on not only the home’s interior design but its overall enjoyment.
“We gave him very little guidance other than opening our doors to him so he could get a feel for what we like,” Mr. Gozlan says.
Gentrifying nature isn’t new, of course. European aristocrats have been artfully pruning their hedges for centuries.
But it’s popularity among Canadians for whom the garden is an all-too brief one-season pleasure is often more a matter of lifestyle than real-estate value.
Mr. Holbrook cites the example of a Collingwood, Ont., client who commissioned $2-million worth of landscaping on a 10-acre property where the house was little more than a ramshackle chalet.
It’s the most expensive garden Mr. Holbrook has ever designed. “Sometimes the garden ends up being worth more than the house,” he says. “This is when the garden isn’t just to accent the house, it’s the more important experience.”
Increasingly, a home’s outdoor space is where people want to congregate.
For his downtown Toronto garden, Joe Mimran, founder of Club Monaco and Joe Fresh, asked Mr. Holbrook to create a great outdoor entertaining space with “a bit of folly.”
“We also wanted a garden that looked very much the same in the winter as the summer,” he says.
“All the rooms face the back garden, so we wanted a visual treat from every view.
“I think gardens are an integral part of the design of any home. It’s about creating an atmosphere and environment that transports you.”
But it’s not just the very rich who are getting down to Earth - ironically, with the sky as their limit.
Nickolaos Kon, co-owner of Toronto-based Fossil Landscapes, says that his clients tend to be more suburban than socialite but even they are demanding gardens that cost as much as $600,000, the budget for a garden he recently completed in Oakville.
“We’re seeing clients, not just the wealthier ones, spending more on their landscapes,” Mr. Kon says.
