Penny Dunn is a landscape and garden designer with a reputation for stylish design and richly varied planting — exuberant and vigorous yet contained by strong, clear lines. Plants are carefully chosen to match climate and style. As a result, her gardens need very little maintenance, the plants following their natural cycle without too much human intervention.
She is a recognised specialist in Greek flora, conducting annual wildflower tours of Athens, Crete and Corfu.
Penny offers a complete design service: horticultural advice, garden
plans, construction and maintenance. She is particularly interested in:
— dry climate gardens
— shady gardens
— Mediterranean gardens
— courtyards and balconies
—restoration of old or historic gardens.
Due to the long drought the focus is on gardens that can cope with dry summers yet be beautiful and usable when family and entertaining are outside. Recent work includes the restoration and replanting of an historic National Trust garden of over an acre in the centre of Melbourne; design, construction and planting of a new ten-acre garden in country Victoria; design and ongoing planting of a formal vegetable potager; a town courtyard in Moorish style.
Internationally, Penny is currently making gardens on Aegina – consultation on and design of a garden on a steep site; and in London – designing and planting a small town garden.
Penny restored an historic ten-acre garden on Mount Macedon. There, she learnt the importance of the genius of the site. She developed a management program that allowed the garden to retain all its most romantic qualities, maintained the garden to a standard to be regularly open to the public, undertook construction of a lake and other major landscaping, and supervised staff and contractors.
Penny owned and ran a nursery specialising in rare plants, with a display garden. All plants were propagated and grown on site. A design service was offered to clients.
Ripponlea is one of the major properties of the National Trust of Victoria. As chair of the Trust’s Ripponlea garden committee, Penny’s responsibilities included planning for ongoing financial viability including development of visitor programs and overseeing garden management.
Penny has EU residency and work status. She studied horticulture at Burnley Horticultural College, Melbourne.
–Member of the
Mediterranean Garden Society
–Contributor to the
Oxford Campanion to Australian Gardens
–Contributor to Flora: A Gardener’s
Encyclopedia
–Worked with Melbourne University on the restoration of Mount Macedon
after the 1983 bushfires. home >