25 Glenmore Road, Braidwood

Owners: Samara Zeitsch and Patrick Bourgault

• Open Sunday only 10am – 4pm
• Cake stall with home baked goods for sale
• Parking along Glenmore Road

At any other country house, the three-inch blue suede heels might seem out of place among the kids’ shoes and work boots by the back door. 

But Commonwealth legislative lawyer Samara Zeitsch – a woman with her roots in the country and her career in the capital – has always been as comfortable in towering heels as a pair of muddy Blundstones.

Samara, who with partner Patrick Bourgault juggles the demands of work, their blended family and an Airbnb, says despite her previously gung-ho approach to gardening, she was struck by an uncharacteristic crisis of confidence after purchasing historic Braidwood property Longsight in the winter of 2016.

“The property hadn’t really been lived in for about five years and it was really starting to show,” she says. 

“It took me a long time to get the confidence to really make some significant changes in the garden; I didn’t want to lose that sense of magic it had so was reluctant to pull things out and rush to impose my style, which is definitely a bit more structured and formal.”

Dating to the 1850s, Longsight was once home to Sir Austin Chapman, the first Member for Eden-Monaro in the inaugural Commonwealth Parliament. 

Before his political career took off, Chapman dabbled in the auctioneering business and ran the Royal Mail Hotel in Braidwood before marrying local girl Catherine O’Brien in 1894. The couple settled at Longsight and had four children over the next six years. Chapman was an enthusiastic supporter of federation and was instrumental in introducing the aged and invalid pensions. He was knighted in 1924 for his services to the country.

Wary of undoing the hard work of Longsight’s previous owners and wanting to do justice to the garden’s history, Samara carefully peeled back the layers of weeds, ivy, and elm suckers, keeping the gems she discovered – roses, flowering quince, granite outcrops – and letting them shine.

Early on, she planted a thuja plicata fastigiata hedge on the eastern boundary and an avenue of capital pears along the driveway before working to open up the vistas from the house to the surrounding farmland.

“A lot of what I’ve done is taken inspiration from what was there and then just repeated the elements I think worked.”

A case in point is the iceberg roses on the home’s eastern side – the original four plants have been repeated and underplanted with munstead lavender – and the garden room on the western side that was created by taming an original box honeysuckle hedge.

A “secret path” which links the property’s front and back gardens now runs along the western boundary and dotted among the original plantings in the garden are swathes of teucrium “Bangay balls”, a trademark of one of Samara’s favourite Australian garden designers, Paul Bangay.

About two years ago, the couple transformed the original stables into an Airbnb where guests get to enjoy the developing garden, complete with wandering chooks, wisteria-draped verandas and views to Wilsons Hill, the final resting place of pioneer, surgeon and explorer Dr Thomas Braidwood Wilson.

Samara says there’s plans in the pipeline to renovate the old blacksmith’s quarters, build a greenhouse and totally give in to her maple obsession.

It’s safe to say Austin Chapman would approve.

Things to look out for:

* Those Bangay balls

* The secret path

* The ancient box hedge that flanked the original carriageway

* A pair of unusual gardening shoes

Photos: Samara Zeitsch