Gull's Cottage

Gull’s Cottage is a white single-storey house with a red tiled roof at 13 Parkes Lane, and its distinguishing quality is that everything sits on one level and nearly everything opens onto the garden.

A paved brick driveway curves up past a garden bed to the garage, a palm tree beside it, parking on the brick. The front is partly screened by dense flowering planting with a house number plaque beside the door. A pergola-covered walkway runs down one side of the house along a lush garden path.

Bookshelves and a bay window

The living rooms are bright and there are several: built-in bookshelves between two sofas, cream sofas on a patterned rug with French doors to the garden, patterned sofas looking through to the dining area, a small lounge with windows onto the green. A bay window seat with cushions and curtains sits off one room. The kitchen is cream-cabinetted over a tiled floor, with a built-in oven, a dishwasher, a granite breakfast bar with two stools and a washing machine set in beneath the counter.

French doors from nearly every room

The bedrooms almost all open outward: a twin with a teal bedspread behind French doors to the garden, a wooden bed frame with doors onto a patio, floral curtains and a way outside, white bedding with fitted wardrobes, one with a built-in dressing table. The bathrooms take a walk-in shower with mosaic tile accents, and a countertop basin beside a bath under striped roman blinds.

Pergola, braai, stone bench

A covered patio under a pergola holds a dining table and a gas braai. A second paved patio with its own pergola sits outside a bedroom. The lawn is mown and edged by a trimmed hedge, with a stone bench under the trees at one end and dense garden beds along the borders.

Out from Gulls Way

The island around it is flat and residential, and one causeway on Armstrong Road ties the whole of it to Knysna. Steenbok Nature Reserve occupies the northern edge and costs nothing to walk into. There are the island’s apartments for smaller parties.

Level living for

A family, or anyone who would rather not deal with stairs and wants garden on every side of them.