Eat and drink in Melbourne enough and sooner or later Andrew McConnell will be there. If you’re not eating in one of his venues, chances are one of the chefs or sommeliers or floor staff at the place you are will have worked at one, such is his spread and longevity. Or if not, maybe the meat they’re serving comes from Meatsmith, his butchery line, which apart from operating four shopfronts, also trades wholesale. Didn’t eat out? Maybe that Basque cheesecake you shared at your friend’s place last night came from one of McConnell’s two Morning Market shops around town, or perhaps it was the fresh-cut flowers, or your last birthday present.
For those observers who pay attention to McConnell and his wife Jo McGann’s work with the Trader House group, the hits are as familiar as they are enduring. There’s the five-spice duck leg to be pulled apart and spread onto bao at Supernormal, the brunch-to-lunch-to-dinner ease of Cumulus Inc. where crumpets give way to roasted lamb shoulder then warm madeleines for dessert, and there’s the ease of Marion, a wine bar, and the Builders Arms Hotel, a pub, each setting the bar a notch or two above the rest.
Then of course, there’s signature fine-diner Cutler & Co, or at least it was until Trader House launched Gimlet in 2020 and garnered global attention by landing a spot on the World’s 50 Best longlist.
There’s so much to cover, but McConnell isn’t interested. Instead, he’s in the garden at his Mornington Peninsula home, which, since he and McGann bought it eight years ago, has become an increasingly important part of his life and routine, something to break him out of the stream of dockets and rosters and order sheets, a place to slow down.
“I come from a world where if I have an idea about a dish, or I have some produce that I want to evolve into a dish, I can present something in a restaurant that could take maybe an hour, or a few days or weeks. So there’s a degree of instant gratification in what I do in my day to day,” says McConnell.
Contrast that to his garden. When McGann and McConnell first bought their property – an hour or so south-east of Melbourne – it came with grounds that had been given plenty of consideration, but were almost English country style in appearance, an acre in size and quite formal, with more than 300 species of bulbs, flowers and plants just at ground level. “A challenge to maintain,” McConnell says, with just a hint of understatement.
The patience came with the overhaul they gave it, which with the guidance of landscape architect Myles Broad, took four years of work. “Going through this process, learning about nature and gardening at a different level, in some ways has taught me to be quite patient.”
The vision, ultimately, was grounded as much in the desire to work with the house as it was utility. “We decided to revisit or approach the property from a different perspective as far as the garden is concerned and how we like to use it,” says McConnell. “The house is a very simple, humble mid-century home. And we really wanted to work on developing a garden that would actually relate to the house and talk to the architecture a little bit as well.”
The results are striking. Vines creep around pillars and awnings, monstera stretches its leaves over maidenhair ferns, bursts of colour break up lush green garden beds as shrubs come into flower. Among established trees – fiery flame trees, walnuts, ornamental pistachios – there are larger examples, an ancient gnarled fig, for example, a rubinia, a weeping willow and an elegant 30-year-old gingko, with fan-shaped leaves that flush yellow in autumn. As for newer species, McConnell has recently planted three Chinese elms, and the six jacarandas the couple planted along the driveway came into flower for the first time last spring.
This excerpt is taken from issue 4 of Swill Magazine. Purchase your copy today.
