JAMES Nicolle has gone from arranging wine and champagne for celebrity events in Sydney to carefully arranging heavy rocks in traditional dry stone walls around the Hunter.
Although it seems a leap, his career change from fine wine supplier - think Hewitt, Kidman and Packer weddings - to landscaping has been a series of steps that started in his own backyard.
James and his wife, Marianne, have always loved gardening and, for their first Sydney property, got design advice from Peter Fudge, now renowned for his work but then just starting out.
"Our first house was tiny and we had a rough idea what we wanted," James says.
"In those days, it was unusual for young couples to engage garden designers and we were fortunate to contact Peter Fudge. He was just starting out.
"He charged us a very reasonable fee for a beautiful plan.
"By the time we went to our next house, we couldn't afford him, so we did it ourselves and we did OK."
Friend and garden illustrator Barbara Clare suggested that a dry stone wall would go well in the yard of their third and final Sydney residence, in Lindfield, so James enrolled in a course at The Australian Botanic Garden at Mount Annan and discovered a new passion with a nostalgic twist.
"Having grown up in Devon, in the UK, I went past hundreds of dry stone walls in Dartmoor National Park on my way to school," he says.
"I found the only master dry stone waller in Australia, who was based at Mount Annan, enrolled in a 'how to dry stone wall' course and I just loved it.
"I built 25 to 30 metres of wall at our house in Sydney and it looked great.
"When we moved here [to Newcastle, in 2006] I enrolled in a horticulture course at Kurri TAFE and started my business with the intent of building some dry stone walls and we called it Stone on Stone [Gardens & Landscapes]."
The walls do not have mortar so look natural and provide habitat for small critters who help gardeners by eating unwanted bugs.
When retaining soil, they allow air to flow and water to drain.
The Dry Stone Walls Association of Australia says dry stone walling dates back to the Neolithic Period and has been used in buildings, arches, monuments, dykes, fish traps and sculpture.
James, who admits the work can be "brutal", uses mostly sandstone sourced locally and from Gosford quarries.
His biggest job has been building entrances to a new subdivision in Maitland - on 38 degree days.
His skill is on display in his own gorgeous cottage garden in Hamilton South, which last year was a winner in the inaugural Newcastle Garden Awards.
Lizards dart in and out of James's "sit in the backyard having a drink wall" as he broadly explains the building technique.
"You have two rows of big base rocks and as you build the wall up - one stone over two and two over one - it is supported by 'through stones' that go from one side of the wall to the other," he says.
"All walls have a rock face and a batter [the width is narrower at the top] and some of my walls have a vertical capping rock."
The Nicolles landscaped their garden when they moved to Hamilton South five years ago, filling in a pool and building up the soil.
"There is more cow manure in here than in a dairy," James quips.
The structure of clipped Japanese box, pots and ornamental pear trees balances curved borders bursting with salvia, lavender, society garlic, gaura (butterfly bush), nepeta (catmint), roses, daisies, sunflowers, Mexican marigold, gardenias and Japanese windflowers.
High hedges of star jasmine and Russian olive turn the backyard into a green, private oasis.
A bay tree provides flavour for the family's cooking, as do herbs in hardwood timber planters built by James.
The couple spends about two hours a week maintaining the garden and three days a year giving it a hearty cut back and mulch.
For them, it's relaxation.
"I'll come out here with a cup of tea and my secateurs and I'll spend five minutes deadheading roses. Gardening is my meditation," Marianne smiles.
