Le Grand Jardin Villa, Devon Valley

At Le Grand Jardin, owner Sue Fontannaz has created something rare: a place where play isn’t decorative — it’s essential.

The invitation arrived like a dare. A black bag with thick gold rope handles. A key emblazoned across the front. Inside, a hollowed copy of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, its centre carved out to hold a magnifying glass. “I wanted people to arrive already slightly off-balance,” says Sue Fontannaz. “Curious. Not quite sure what they’re walking into.” It’s an accurate beginning. Because Le Grand Jardin is not a house that behaves.

A GARDEN FIRST, ALWAYS

“The house was a mess,” Sue says lightly. “But I fell in love with the big trees — and that feeling of escaping down the staircase to the lily pond.” That instinct towards landscape, towards movement, defines everything that followed.

Raised in the Eastern Cape by an art teacher mother who gardened obsessively, Sue’s references are not architectural in the conventional sense. They are emotional. Seasonal. Social. “I’ve always loved the idea of those old-fashioned, multi-generational summer evenings,” she says. “Where children are playing hide and seek, and everything just… flows.” At Le Grand Jardin, it does.

The garden isn’t an addition. It’s the centre of gravity. Open-fire cooking, dancing on the lawn, night swimming, outdoor movies that keep children off screens. A newly commissioned fire circle — a nod to both gathering and a quiet, personal love of Johnny Cash — designed, as she puts it, to “broaden the circle of friends.”

PLAY, SERIOUSLY

“There’s a wonderful quote by Oscar Wilde,” Sue says. “Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about.” She doesn’t quote it for effect. She lives by it. “I research awe, wonder and the power of play,” she explains, referencing her work in leadership coaching, particularly during Covid, when structure and control overtook instinct.

The result is a house that quietly resists both. “Somewhere along the way, we stop playing,” she says. “And if we don’t take time to return to it, we end up with a joyless kind of rigidity.” At Le Grand Jardin, play is not an aesthetic. It’s a framework.

A carousel sits between the trees. A rowboat waits at the edge of the lily pond. Children spill across lawns and into water. Adults follow, almost without noticing. “If the kids are having fun, the parents relax,” she says. “And then they remember how to play too.”

BIRKIN, NOT BARDOT

If Le Grand Jardin had a personality, it would be depending on who you ask, either Brigitte Bardot or Jane Birkin. “Bernard thinks Brigitte Bardot,” Sue says, smiling. “I think Jane Birkin.” The distinction matters. Birkin, in Sue’s reading, is effortless. Slightly undone. English at the edges, French at the core. Never overworked. Never too perfect. “English roots, married to a French character,” she says. “Slightly tatty. Doesn’t take herself too seriously. Always a song in her heart.” It is, unmistakably, the spirit of the house.

There is beauty here but it resists polish. Interiors feel layered rather than styled. Objects gathered, not placed. Spaces that open into one another without ceremony. Even the grand gestures, the carousel, the glasshouse, feel less like statements and more like extensions of personality.

DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE

Inside, the tone shifts but never tightens. The front stoep in summer. The kitchen in winter, gathered around the AGA long after the evening should have ended. A sensory wine experience — “down the rabbit hole,” as Sue calls it — inspired by Drops of God and the ritual of scent and taste.

The glass conservatory, Bernard’s idea — extends the garden into cooler months, inspired by Victorian glasshouses and, possibly, a moment of watching The Crown and thinking of Prince Albert’s Crystal Palace. Nothing is overly explained. It simply… exists.

A HOUSE THAT EMBRACES YOU

What surprises most is not the imagination but the intimacy. “The house embraces you,” Sue says. “It’s like a good friend. It doesn’t expect you to be on your best behaviour.” This, perhaps, is the real luxury. Not scale. Not perfection. Not even beauty. But ease. A place that allows you to arrive exactly as you are and quietly become something lighter.

THE POINT OF IT ALL

At one point, Sue references a line often attributed to Pierre Teilhard de Chardin: “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.” It lingers, because Le Grand Jardin, for all its charm and eccentricity, is not random. It is, quite precisely, about that idea. About returning, not to childhood, but to something adjacent to it. Curiosity. Instinct. Joy without justification.

ENDING

You arrive expecting a villa.

You leave remembering how to play.

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Images: supplied by LGJV Website