IF you want a change, either update your man, your car or your house, says Cecilia Morris. The Brighton author and poet sits in the garden of her 17th home, talking wisely about why she has moved and set up house so many times over the years.
While Morris’ professional background is in corporate training, she established herself as a writer, her poetry blossoming with lines inspired by time spent in her garden.
Her garden is at its finest right now, and while it’s much smaller than some she has created in previous homes, it is still a striking sanctuary thanks to the amount she has been able to fit in such a little space.
Morris grows her own food in a vegie patch bountiful with eggplants, zucchini, lettuce and herbs. The garden was designed to allow Morris and her husband the chance to travel. ‘‘Everything goes to sleep in winter,’’ she says. ‘‘I cover everything with blood and bone and cover it up until the warmer months.’’
The home – pictured below right before Morris moved in and got her hands on the garden – is an award-winning creation by Shelton Finnis Architecture.
It won the Bayside council’s Built Environment Award for the most creative building design in 2008. Morris says she contacted the architects after buying the property to thank them for their audacious creation.
While she loves the stand-out building, she found the interior to be bland and uninspiring and set about splashing on colour and highlighting all her favourite aspects.
Dressed in red and purple, Morris says she chose the same two bold colours to feature on walls, petunias in the garden and across a large awning which expands over her back patio.
‘‘I don’t understand why people are so afraid of colour, everyone walks in and notices the walls in here straight away, colour makes people happy,’’ she says.
A sapphire pool and yoga area complement the tranquil outdoor space and a sense of peace pervades the lower floor of the home.
Morris studied feng shui to learn how to best present her home to maximise good energy. Feeling ill at ease and unwell in a previous property, she consulted a feng shui master who told her how to rearrange and change the house. Morris said she noticed immediate change, and now applies the practise to current home.
Many of Morris’ homes have been around the bayside area, and she has spent hours toiling to create Mediterranean and English gardens in her properties – all different to those before.
Morris says investment is not motivation – it is not cheap to continuously move and change homes – rather, it is the change in lifestyle.
‘‘Creating a new home is like an adventure to me,’’ she says.
‘‘People go on holidays for an adventure, and to escape from their lives for a while, but I like thinking of creating a home where I want to be and enjoying the whole process. People get so stressed about the thought of moving but I don’t think it has to be like that.’’
Morris is unsure what her next adventure will be. ‘‘I go through stages where I think about downsizing to an apartment, I’ll go and look at one in Port Melbourne and get excited but then my friends remind me that if I lived in a place without a garden I would end up digging up the car park,’’ she says.
Morris may have found her perfect home already.
‘‘It’s so quiet and peaceful here, I can ride my bike to Church Street, I’m close to the train and to the water,’’ she says.
‘‘Where else could I possibly move that is as good a spot as this?’’
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