By CAROLINE TUNG

If conjuring up a garden were akin to painting a picture, Phillip Withers would be the mind and hands behind the masterpiece.

For the award-winning landscape designer, it all came from combining creativity with a simple passion for plants.

Based in Richmond, Withers discovered his “creative fix” through illustration and painting as a teenager.

After majoring in print screen design at RMIT, Withers dabbled in photography and fashion, before finding his way into designing gardens.

“I’ve always been into plants but I didn’t realise how much I was into them,” Withers says. “That passion for plants really came out in those early 20s.”

This year, he is encouraging young people to embrace nature through his latest project, I See Wild which will be showcased at next week's Melbourne International Flower and Garden Show.

“[The garden] is about stepping into your back door, you see nature, and then you see wild,” he says.

“It’s about embracing a natural place in your own home garden.”

Withers drew on the connection between art and design and the garden when mapping out details such as colour and visual hierarchy within a space.

“There’s a lot of core similarities in painting a picture as there is in building a garden,” he says.

“If you really peg it back and think what takes the eye and what feels nice and what colours really make you feel good, that [makes] you want to be in [it].”

Withers wants to give people something they can enjoy.

“We set a brief and make sure that this person is going to gain a lifestyle having that garden, walking out into it and being able to cut some herbs, pick some flowers, and have that … space that really conjures up something in their life [where] they can go and sit in and learn and enjoy and create,” Withers says.

While singing the praises of Melbourne’s varied seasons, Withers says the city’s café culture and its connection to gardening has an important role in sustaining horticulture practices.

“Having the weather for it definitely builds up that scenario where people really enjoy their gardens and they can get out and grow,” he says.

“We have such different, such nice microclimates within this region that we can grow so much.”

For Withers, growing up around food plants from a young age and watching his grandmother harvest vegetables and herbs from the backyard had its influences.

Research from The Australia Institute, a think tank, revealed revealed 52 per cent of Australian households grow their own food, and 91 per cent say it saves them money.

“Having that connection to a garden from the useability perspective in terms of being able to grow … is a massive connection to food and gardens as well, Withers says.

“People want to be out in it, which is great.”

He says gardening is not only about being attuned to the market, but that developing a plan for longevity is critical.

“People jump onto stuff in the market at a certain point in time very quickly,” Withers says, citing concrete as an example.

He says people should choose practical and sustainable materials as opposed to jumping onto fads.

“It makes hell of a lot of sense to have not just a good-looking space but space you’re going to get out into, whether it be an amazing view from in the house, but still [have] that usability,” Withers says.

After receiving the Australian Garden Show’s People’s Choice Award and Honda Sustainability Award, Withers says he is “really proud” of his work.

“We’re going to England this year to help out another garden designer and start to look at what’s next, whether it be England or New Zealand and all those sorts of shows,” he says.

Withers’ advice to young people is to go out and build gardens, whether it be volunteering or starting your own.

“I think plants are big right now, they have been for quite some time [and] it’s only going to get bigger and bigger.”

The Melbourne International Flower and Garden Show – at the Royal Exhibition Building March 29–April 2.