A cluster of cacti lines the central path through Alex Fulton’s garden. Upright and graphic, their presence is unexpected, setting the tone immediately.
Beyond the path, the planting is controlled and deliberate. There are no flower beds competing for attention, no sense of the garden performing for the house. Instead, green holds the space, layered and varied, applied with restraint. The garden isn’t decorative. It’s considered, and it’s designed to be read in relation to what happens inside. “I approached it the way I would a room,” says Alex Fulton. “Flow, balance and knowing when to stop.”
Such thinking has always underpinned Alex’s work. Colour may be her calling card, but structure sits beneath it. Confidence has always been present, even when her work leans generously into colour. What has shifted in recent years isn’t her aesthetic so much as her pace.
With her daughters, Isla and Violet, now mostly living away from home, life has moved into a different register for Alex and her husband, Jeff. The daily urgency that once shaped routines has eased, allowing for longer attention and fewer decisions made in haste.
“I couldn’t have worked like this ten or fifteen years ago,” she says. “There’s more patience now and I’m more comfortable trusting my instincts.”
That trust runs across everything she does, from interiors to art and colour work, disciplines Alex has never experienced as separate. “They’re all part of the same thinking,” she says. “I’m always arranging colour, form and feeling. The scale changes, but the idea doesn’t.”
Her studio on the ground floor looks directly onto the garden, reflecting that fluidity. It’s a working room with canvases, paints and material samples in constant rotation. Interior renders sit alongside half-finished artworks. Nothing is precious, and nothing is hidden away. “I need to be able to move easily between things,” Alex says. “If there’s friction, I lose momentum.”
She describes the space as an organised playground, one that supports curiosity without becoming chaotic. That balance between play and control is one she understands well.
The same instincts sit behind her painting practice, which has taken on greater prominence in recent years. Her interior scenes aren’t literal depictions of real rooms: they’re imagined environments shaped by decades of spatial thinking. “They’re not constrained by budgets or clients,” she says. “I can use whatever colour I like. I can change my mind.”
Some compositions draw loosely from projects she has worked on; others begin with photographs, sketches or digital experiments. The point, she emphasises, is mood — the moment when colour sits correctly in space. “I know when it’s right,” she says. “You just feel it when things align.”
Those instincts were also central to the garden, developed in collaboration with landscape designer Henry Blakely. From the outset, Alex was clear about what she wanted to avoid. “No flowers. Just green,” she says. “Variation comes from form and texture.”
Together, they focused on structure: how planting would sit against the house, how sightlines would work from different rooms, how the garden would register at ground level as well as from above. Above all, it needed to function as part of everyday life.
Planting sits close to the windows, offering a different spatial experience from the open coastal views upstairs. Where the upper level looks outward, the lower level looks inward, bringing a sense of enclosure. “It was always part of the thinking,” says Alex. “What the garden gives to the house, and what the house gives back.”
With her studio also at home, that exchange matters. Time outside becomes a way to step away from work without leaving it altogether, shifting the rhythm of the day.
It’s considered, conceived as an extension of how the house is lived in — used daily, adaptable in pace, and generous enough to accommodate whatever the moment calls for.
That might be swimming, sauna sessions, reading, long conversations and meals shared without ceremony. It’s social when it needs to be, private when it doesn’t. “When we do have people over, we go all out,” says Alex. “But most days, it’s just part of how we live.”
The same thinking carries through to her recent rebrand and website refresh, developed with Bathgate Design. The work didn’t mark a change in direction, it provided a structure that could hold everything she already does. “Cleaner, bolder, more confident,” says Alex. “It needed to catch up.”
Letting others interpret her practice proved unexpectedly revealing. Her daughter Isla spotted a house form within the brand mark, something Alex hadn’t consciously recognised herself. “Fresh eyes show you things you miss,” she says.
Looking ahead, Alex resists pinning her practice to fixed outcomes. There are ideas forming around scale, collaboration and three-dimensional work, left deliberately open for now. “I like not knowing exactly where it’ll land,” she says.
At this stage, that openness feels settled rather than uncertain, shaped by experience, patience and a confidence that no longer needs to explain itself.
alexfulton.nz
Words Alice Lines
Photography Liv van Leeuwen
The post A return to Alex Fulton’s home reveals a garden now central to living and making appeared first on homestyle magazine.
