The Calthorpe’s front garden is a picture perfect setting for their house, laid out at the time the house was built and lovingly planted and tended with help from a gardener.

The trees have been chosen from the Yarralumla Nursery not to shadow the house, leave leaves in the gutters or send out damaging roots. It is carefully planned for Mrs Calthorpe’s love of fragrant flowers – sweet smelling narcissus, daphne, sweet peas and sweet william.

The front beds are for hardy colour – roses, asters and snapdragons while climbing roses burst into bloom on the verandah pillars.

The best thing about our front garden is that it’s a great place to have a birthday party.
On my 5th birthday, we celebrated on the front verandah with cake and candles and lots of friends. 

We held hands and sang ‘here we go ‘round the mulberry bush’ and ‘looby-loo’ where you put one foot in and one foot out. Grown-ups sang and made an arch that we crocodile through before our heads are chipper-choppered off and we had to choose between an orange and a lemon. When all the heads were off, we had a tug of war and fell about giggling in our party dresses.