Book excerpt: For too long Australians have been dominated by European gardening trends. Gordon Ford, like no other landscape designer before him, mastered the natural Australian style. Gordon Ford was early influenced by the English natural style landscape school of the eighteenth century. But his great skill has been to work with Australia's natural elements and to develop gardens that not only honoured the rugged beauty of the Australian landscape, but did so in a way that captured its apparent timelessness -- his gardens look as if they have always been there. In shaping our visual world, Gordon Ford focused on the essential balance between mass and void in his designs. His balance of the natural elements of rocks, water, trees and other plants achieves a timeless harmony -- we feel totally satisfied but uncertain as to where Mother nature stars and Gordon Ford finishes.