SERIES 37 | Episode 05
Costa visits pop legend Leo Sayer and his wife Donatella Piccinetti in their serene, rose-filled country garden.Featured Garden Owner:Leo Sayer & Donatella PiccinettiLocation:Dharawal & Gandangara Country; Berrima, NSWClimate Zone:Cool temperateGarden Established:2015Style:Formal, ItalianKey Features:Roses, hedging and topiary, cottage garden, olives
Leo Sayer has been a household name since the early 1970s, with international hits including You Make Me Feel Like Dancing, When I Need You, and More Than I Can Say. His songs form part of Australia’s cultural soundtrack, loved by baby boomers and rediscovered by younger generations alike. Born and raised in Sussex, England, Leo’s love of landscape runs deep. “There was a giant sequoia tree I loved as a boy,” he says. “That sense of age and endurance stayed with me. Here in Berrima, surrounded by old buildings and rolling green hills, it reminds me of home.”
Leo first visited Berrima in 1975 during his Australian tour with Paul Dainty. “I didn’t want to fly. I was mobbed at airports in those days,” he laughs. “We drove from Sydney to Canberra. We stopped at the general store in Berrima, and I thought, this looks just like Sussex. I fell in love with the place right then.” “The garden is Donatella’s passion,” he admits. “I don’t have green fingers – I’m a terrible gardener! But I love being part of what she’s created. It’s magical.”
Donatella Piccinetti grew up surrounded by vineyards, olive groves, and the artistic gardens of Italy. “I studied and worked in England for many years,” she says, “but when we moved to Australia, I had to start again. The climate, the plants, the soil – everything was different. I had so much to relearn, but I loved it.”
The Garden
Their 2200m² block is long and narrow. Leo and Donatella’s garden blends English formality, Tuscan romance, and Australian authenticity. Donatella and Leo moved to Berrima in 2015. “Everything needed rebuilding, walls, paths and soil,” she recalls. “It was a huge challenge, but I wanted to create a garden that felt Italian in spirit. Formal yet romantic, with structure and flow.” Together, they’ve transformed a neglected block into a romantic, European-style garden layered with stories, sculpture, song, and plenty of roses.
The garden is divided into three main areas:
Cottage Garden
This surrounds Leo’s music studio – a straightforward formal structure featuring roses, clematis, maples, acanthus, cypress, and box hedging. Donatella’s playful touch extends to the quirky front lonicera hedge: “At first it looked like a long green caterpillar,” she laughs. “Now it’s shaped into something flowing and sculptural. People stop to admire it, it makes them smile.”
Olive Garden
The entrance is through a simple archway cut into the formal Cypress hedge (a feature that Leo uses all the time to chat to his fans on socials). It’s a tranquil, calm garden with tall olive trees flanking a gravel path lined with salvia, lawn, and a clipped teucrium hedge. Off centre stands a hand-carved Italian marble fountain, installed to mark their marriage in 2023, after forty years together. Surrounding flowerbeds overflow with roses, daphne, hydrangeas, weigela, camellias, and geraniums, harmoniously layered in soft greens and pastels. “This part of the garden feels like a cathedral,” says Donatella. “Peaceful and full of light.”
Rear Garden
This is the final section where the real gardening is done and it was the backdrop to their 2023 wedding. From the upstairs bedroom window, Leo loves to look down upon the garden rooms. A key influence came from Donatella’s friendship with Ali Mentesh of Red Cow Farm. “Ali and I used to meet and talk about gardens for hours. His passion for plants – especially roses – was infectious. He helped me understand how to make a European-style garden thrive here.”
Geometric box hedges, Italian cypress and topiary contrast with curved lawn paths, stone-edged borders, and a central sunken lawn carpeted in pratia, dotted with tiny white flowers. “We like to lie down there,” Leo says. Donatella planted it, loved it, “and now I just let it go wild.”
Planting here is bold and theatrical – lavender, lupins, irises, gladioli, and aquilegias, interwoven with moody foliage from Cercis ‘Forest Pansy’, black sambucus, crepe myrtle, and the extraordinary dark, purple-leafed Angelica gigas. “I love colour,” says Donatella, “but it’s the shapes and flow that matter most, the way the garden moves.”
Roses are threaded throughout this garden rather than confined to a single area, echoing Donatella’s belief that “roses belong everywhere.” Her favourites include New Dawn, Blushing Pierre de Ronsard, Red Pierre, and Madame Alfred Carrière, along with David Austin classics such as Lady of Shallot, William Morris, Claire Austin, Vanessa Bell, Wollerton Old Hall, Radio Times, and Jude the Obscure. Leo reveals, “Before I was a musician, I worked as a graphic artist. I actually designed some of the early David Austin rose labels! I never imagined we’d be growing them here. I sometimes think we should create one called Donatella.”
At the far end lies the kitchen garden, a neat arrangement of four raised beds overflowing with seasonal vegetables and leafy greens. “This is what keeps me young,” Leo says, “and Donatella’s a wonderful cook – last night’s salad came straight from here!” “I don’t use chemicals,” says Donatella. “Everything has its place. Insects, birds, lizards. It’s all connected.”
Filmed on Dharawal & Gandangara Country | Southern Highlands, NSW
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