The house next door - Villa D'Este

Back in the early 70s I bought a house at Stirling in the Adelaide Hills. At the time of the purchase the seller was splitting the property as in sub-dividing, and selling off 50% of the land area. The area for sale was 5800 square metres and was the major part of his beautiful garden, originally established back in 1890.

I was 30 years old and there was no way I could afford to also purchase this block of garden, so that was the end of the story for me. I expected it would sit vacant for some time thinking this hilly sloping site would not be very appealing to a future home owner. After a year or two, the garden suddenly turned into a noisy construction site and I soon hated the place. We would be woken each morning at 7AM with the sounds of drilling, digging, sawing, hammering and so on. This continued on as a major construction for about 18 months till the house next door was finally completed late in 1976.

We never met the new owners, never got to set foot on their property, and a year or so after completion, we moved back to the city. However I had always hankered to see what lay inside the grand marble house and see the wonderful garden. The decades went by and the house never came back onto the market. It seemed like I wouldn't get to see inside the house next door, or take a look over the side fence at my old garden on the southern side which used to be part of their present garden.

Imagine my surprise when I saw in the Saturday paper that the "house next door" was up for sale. Accordingly I made an appointment to meet with the agent today for a viewing, along with several other interested parties who had been invited there for the same time. It was a revelation. I mostly took photos of the garden because it would have been extremely bad manners to take photos of the house, with 2 agents working the property. So I took a quick snap of the front driveway entrance and agent's sign as we were leaving.

The house was wonderful of course, Beverly Hills style, with almost every room having an amazing view into different parts of the garden. The windows were floor to ceiling, perfectly capturing the views. The best part of the place was the magnificent botanic like gardens. The present owners, now in their 80s have been keeping the garden in pristine condition for years. It has finally become too much for them with much of the garden containing steep pathways and many steps..

The trees in the garden included Cedars, Liquid ambers, Copper birch, Camelias, Oaks, Beeches, Pines,  Elms and Maples. Although I am quite willing to sell my soul for this beautiful house and garden, Paladian's knees are not up to it. So sadly this chapter of my life is now closed, after 40 years of waiting...to see next door.

BTW my former garden, which I photographed over the side fence - had regressed with many of the flower beds now covered with ivy. It was something of a sad "homecoming."