PERHAPS best known as the “Christmas lights house”, the lovely, elegant garden at 3 Tennyson Crescent, Forrest, will be seen in a new light when it’s opened to the public for the first time as part of Open Gardens Australia on the weekend of October 20-21.

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Last year, homeowner David Richards set a new Guinness World Record for the most lights on a residential home, with more than 331,000 Christmas lights attracting thousands of visitors.

“We’re giving the lights a rest this year,” he says. “I need a break!”

The family moved in six years ago to a “run down, but well-established” garden, says Richard.

“We gutted the garden with a bobcat but kept the original plantings, many of which dated back to the 1930s,” he says.

The mature plantings include stunning pink, white and purple azaleas, which were relocated to the rear of the home.

“We had the garden professionally landscaped at the outset, which makes the garden easier to maintain now,” says Richard. “If you get it right at the start it makes all the difference.”

At the front of the home is a large circular driveway bordered by weeping Japanese maples, crab apple and weeping birch, above flowering carpet roses and escallonia. It’s also protected by several enormous pine trees, which originally formed a hedge around the garden.

“We love the shady canopy we get at the front – it makes a wonderful place for the kids to play and ride their bikes,” he says.

A verandah wraps around the home and provides the family’s favourite place from which to enjoy the garden. It overlooks the lawn and beautiful contoured beds edged in English and Japanese box, with a mix of hellebores, azaleas, ground cover camellias, rhododendrons, tulips and colourful annuals.

“There’s always something flowering, even if it doesn’t last very long,” says David’s wife Janean.

All the new plantings, including golden ash, hydrangeas, camellias, manchurian pears and port-wine magnolia, were chosen to fit with the old style of the garden, says Richard.

The garden at 3 Tennyson Crescent, will be open on Saturday, October 20 and Sunday, October 21, 10am-4.30pm. Adults $7, children under 18 are free. There will be morning and afternoon tea for sale, with tea and coffee. Funds raised will go to the Open Garden Scheme and SIDS & Kids ACT. More information at www.opengarden.org.au.