From the Army to the garden, Fleur Froggatt opens her Braddon oasis

Posted on 23 September, 2026

In terms of career pivots, Fleur Froggatt’s is pretty spectacular.

Upon the cusp of promotion to Brigadier, she walked away from the Army and into the wilds of landscaping.

Opening her Braddon oasis as part of Canberra’s Open Garden Scheme, Fleur is looking forward to sharing her story with the general public, explaining her journey and how water, stone, glass, foliage and flowers combine to make a suburban block feel like a series of small discoveries.

Her garden is also an education on patience and planning.

It began with a knock-down rebuild in 2014, a new family home and a difficult site left scarred by the construction.

“It was a blank canvas of compacted clay and builders’ rubble due to the knock-down rebuild process. We had some basic landscaping done as part of the build which included the perimeter stone wall, front path and deck. The rest was lawn.”

Fleur, however, was well practised in turning challenge into purpose. She had moved to Canberra from Avalon on Sydney’s northern beaches as a young child with her parents and two older brothers, completed her schooling here, and joined the Australian Army through ADFA at just 17. Her 28-year Army career would take her all the way to Colonel, giving her the discipline, resilience and problem-solving mindset that would later prove invaluable in the garden.

During long service leave, with a “forever home” newly built around her, Fleur felt the pull of the unfinished outdoors. She wanted the garden to hold the same sense of permanence, warmth and invitation as the house itself. So she started where many brave beginners start – by learning. A Canberra Institute of Technology short course in garden design led to a DIY paving course, and soon Fleur was acquiring the practical skills she needed as she went – paving, basic carpentry, planting, irrigation and construction.

In 2016, over six intense months, she built the first version of the garden largely herself, with help from her husband. More than half the lawn disappeared. In its place came rooms, paths, productive corners and places to gather or retreat. What had been a blank canvas began to feel like a garden with a heartbeat.

The experience changed the direction of Fleur’s life. On the cusp of promotion to Brigadier, her thoughts kept returning not to the next rank, but to the garden she had made and the creative possibilities it had unlocked.

“The turmoil of an Army lifestyle is simply not compatible with gardening,” she says.

“I have always been a creative person and I felt a convincing pull towards a major career pivot.”

Making the decision to retire from the Army, she stepped straight into studying Landscape Architecture at the University of Canberra before establishing her own design business, Gardens with Fleur, in 2018.

The business name feels wonderfully apt, but it also hints at Fleur’s approach. For her, gardens are deeply personal places shaped around the people who use them: the teenager drawn to the art studio, the daughter who loves the sauna garden, the husband who gravitates to the fountain, even the cat, Misty, who claims the glasshouse as its own.

To be honest, that glasshouse was one of the garden’s more challenging additions. It arrived on five pallets in a thousand pieces, demanding patience, persistence and no small amount of practical confidence – as well as faith that her husband would not bust a pane while using his rubber mallet to join glass and metal…

These days, the garden is settled, requiring a more relaxed vigilance. And Fleur has no regrets about the career pivot.

Her ordinary working day often begins with a cuppa and gentle walk through the paths before a client meeting, garden or nursery visit, design work and business administration. At home, she spends around six hours a week in the garden when she can, dividing her time between maintenance and creation. For Fleur, the maintenance is not a chore but a form of physical and mental therapy.

Her Braddon garden is designed to feel larger than it is. Its impact comes not from scale but composition – diverse plant species providing ongoing flower and foliage interest, thoughtful flow, layered spaces, productive areas, sculptural details and a strong sense of invitation. Not a single centimetre is unproductive. The side alley down the houses an espaliered orchard, through which three cherished and happy chickens roam. Above their coop a productive beehive provides honey on tap. A water tank augments the irrigation system which went in last year.

Before then, the garden survived on “tough love” with some hand watering. Fleur has chosen plants for their position, soil and resilience, using diversity to help the garden cope with Canberra’s unpredictable swings between wet and dry seasons, heat and cold.

There is also a closed-loop ethic at work. Five compost bins collect leaves, prunings, kitchen scraps and chicken manure, turning the garden’s own waste back into compost and mulch. It is regenerative in spirit as much as practice – a garden that feeds itself, changes with its family and continues to teach its maker.

Perhaps that is why Fleur loves Open Gardens. She attends them for inspiration, plant knowledge and the pleasure of being among like-minded people. She believes there is no wrong or right way to create a garden, just only the joy different garden styles bring to different people.

And people do respond with joy. Fleur says it is often the least expected observations – the teenager, the tradie, the delivery person – that stay with her. Even the postie delivers mail to the front door so he can pause in the garden. And Misty is always on hand to receive some compliments.