In the world of showstopping, special occasion desserts – this nostalgic tiered vanilla sponge from our divine food columnist Julia Busuttil Nishimura takes the cake (sorry not sorry for that pun!) for dishes you can achieve at home.

With fresh raspberries, tart lemon curd and crème fraîche icing folded into layers of pillowy butter cake, this is what you make when it’s time to celebrate something special. Like, say…. Mother’s Day?

If you were asked you to imagine your perfect garden, what would it include? A front yard that acts like a welcome mat to your house? Paving stone steppers that wind a path through lush plants? Beds positively stuffed with soft and colourful flowers? A pizza oven?

Chances are it would look something like the Sharp Street project by Peachy Green, which contains all of these features! This gorgeous suburban garden combines family functionality with a dreamy, rambling ambience that is totally picturesque.

It’s a perfectly balanced outdoor space: every utilitarian moment is softened by greenery, foliage and flora. Put simply, this is a gardener’s garden!

When the seasons shift from summer to autumn, almost immediately we start to crave more hearty, earthy flavours.

Julia Busuttil Nishimura hits the spot yet again with this vibrant pesto linguine! It contains herby, nutty flavours reminiscent of summer, with extra depth from olive oil and zingy rocket. Like trans-seasonal fashion, but for your palate… Yum!

So you’ve already seen the incredible treehouse that accompanies this garden in Bronte – but the key feature of this breezy family home is its connection to nature. Hugh Main of Spirit Level Designs was engaged by the homeowner (renowned architect Madeleine Blanchfield) to create a garden that works in tandem with their dreamy beach-side home.

With a steep site to contend with, and a sometimes blustery coastal climate, the final palette had to be soft as well as tough. A combination of mature trees, robust silvery cacti and green foliage creates a rich and layered oasis.

After seeing team Phillip Withers’s ‘I See Wild’ installation at Melbourne International Flower and Garden Show in 2017, Melbourne-based couple Malcolm Watkins and Peter Kerr (of PLK Interiors) engaged the landscape specialists to create a captivating garden to surround their Cera Stribley and AV-ID designed residence in Toorak. 

Comprising three separate pockets of garden that each required a distinct horticultural approach, Phil and his team devised channels of foliage that connected the landscape with the architecture, while also giving the separate sections a distinct character and function. Not to mention one seriously vibing infinity pool!

Every aspect of this Hunter Valley project by Dangar Barin Smith is ambitious. From the hillside location, to the dry, clay-like conditions of the soil, designing a garden here presented a host of challenges. But nothing was more daunting than its scale.

Luckily, a solid partnership between client and designer has resulted in an enviable garden, perfectly suited to the site’s sprawling proportions. Sometimes, it really is possible to create something out of nothing!

Anastasia Elias renovated her home in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs at the beginning of 2019, and began planting the garden in winter of the same year, just before her young family moved into their new house. In that short time, the garden has become an abundant wonderland – sprouting with vegetable patches and self-seeded flowers that scatter the meandering front grass of their own accord.

Anastasia is a self-taught gardener, and her passion for horticulture is guided by a concept called biophilia: the belief in an intense and symbiotic affinity between humans and the natural world. This approach permeates the entire garden, from the cubby house overgrown with jasmine and violets, to the lunar calendar that she uses to plot her planting cycles.

This is a deeply holistic family garden, one that is constantly informing and framing the human lives that tend it.

Summer is done, Easter is approaching and, all of a sudden, it’s sweet bun season. From hot cross to cinnamon, babka to challah, there’s nothing more comforting than a perfect twist of slightly-sweet-slightly-savoury bread when the weather turns cool.

Julia Busuttil Nishimura guides us through the changing of the seasons with her favourite flavour combo, chocolate and hazelnut, in delicious, doughy form.

This will also be the last time we capture Julia in her often-photographed Brunswick home, as she’s just moved house – the end of an era!

This suburban family garden in Hunters Hill has been tended to by the same owners since 2004, whose stewardship oversaw planting of an excellent foundation palette over the last decade. These loving efforts of the amateur gardeners have now been built upon by landscape architect Hugh Burnett.

The clients engaged Hugh and Ballast Landscape builders to add some structure to their beloved green space, uniting the many functions of this high-use space with its lovingly nurtured character.

Why have pizza when you can have galette? Just ask the French… It’s all about the pastry!

As we come to the close of summer, there’s no better time to mix the best of zesty seasonal vegetables with a flaky, buttery golden crust. Here, Julia Busuttil Nishimura gives us a mouthwatering recipe for just that, with her simple, easy-to-assemble savoury galettes, plus three different topping combinations. It’s the perfect way to spotlight those oh-so-good summer veggies that you can’t get enough of right now (*hello* cherry tomatoes!).