Gardens

Garden stories are some of our most popular reads on TDF these days – take a look at the news cycle in the last 18 months and it’s not hard to work out why! There’s nothing more calming than bathing in the beauty of a glorious planting scheme, and landscape designers are the ones responsible for that instant tranquility.

They are the craftspeople taming the space between the domestic and wild, and it’s about time they got some recognition! From industry legends to newcomers, these are the 12 outstanding projects shortlisted in the Landscape Design category of the TDF + Laminex Design Awards 2021.

This category is proudly sponsored by Eco Outdoor.

Whether it’s touring through his legendary home garden at Stonefields, or joining him for a guided tour of the beautiful Daylesford region, everybody loves Paul Bangay! So much so, in fact, that his classic book Paul Bangay’s Guide to Plants has recently been updated and re-released in a new expanded edition.

With tips for gardens in a changing climate, anecdotes and insights into successful landscape design, this fresh edition features two new chapters!

Read on below for an extract on how to choose the perfect plant for your garden: big or small!

Unlike many coastal properties, the brief for this garden on the Mornington Peninsula was to create seclusion and sanctuary, rather than to maximise beach views.

In response to the sprawling site, Ian Barker Gardens designed a varied, six-part layout encompassing outdoor entertaining, a sunset terrace, a pool, fire-pit and luscious flowery plantings. It’s a ‘secret garden’ filled with unexpected delights!

Michael Bates of Bates Landscape started work on this garden 12 years ago, under different owners. Once the property was sold, the new custodians re-engaged the landscape designer to rework the garden, to complement a new renovation.

Centred around the new Madeleine Blanchfield-designed residence, a bold sculptural artwork, and a desire to activate all parts of the steep and windy site, Michael’s new garden layout connects a variety of functional and aesthetic pockets through a central lawn.

Each outdoor space in this vast and varied garden is its own moment!

A great garden can completely elevate a home. But it takes a pretty special garden to transport you to a totally different hemisphere! Despite being located in the summery eastern beaches of Sydney, this dreamy garden belonging to landscape designer Anthony Wyer could easily be on a sun-scorched Greek island.

Replete with a lush, layered planting palette, pool and a sandstone cabana cave, the Boulder House garden is like being on holiday, at home! What more can we say? It’s absolute heaven.

It has the makings of a great rom-com: tricky conditions (a sloping site and large established trees), an existing lover (a pre-ordered pool), conflicting desires (the clients being a family of five) and a dashing newcomer (Mcnuttndorf Landscapes). But these landscape designers + this Fairfield backyard = the best meet-cute ever!

From these many plot lines, director and designer Lori McNutt has created an undulating backyard wonderland. Replete with veggie beds, a gin deck, a pond-like pool and a rockery filled with everything from local indigenous species to large semi-tropical plants, it has everything each member of the family asked for. And all in the delicious embrace of surrounding majestic trees. It’s a love story with a happy ending!

To say this garden has undergone a transformation would be an understatement.

What was recently a large, barren plot accompanying a newly-built home in Kenthurst (39 kilometres north-west of Sydney’s CBD) is now an absolutely thriving garden for its elderly owner.

The client’s brief can be boiled down to four key elements – accessibility, refuge, social opportunity, and views – but their main request was for flowers! The resulting design by Outdoor Establishments combines seasonal colour, mature trees, and bird-attracting species, delineated by stone walls and paved areas featuring textural travertine from Eco Outdoor, to create multiple zones for eating, lounging and enjoying the garden. The perfect outcome for an extended family who love to entertain!

In 2015, we visited the incredible Northern Rivers home of jewellery designer and landscape architect Lisa Hochhauser and her husband, Robert Bleakley. The couple’s home sits on the crest of a 120 acre hinterland property, surrounded by protected natural heath. At the time, work to cultivate ten acres of unprotected land for a residential garden had only recently been completed. 

Six years after our visit (and close to ten years since its initial completion), this garden has bloomed into full maturity. With a vision to return the land to the biodiverse wilderness it would have once been, Lisa and her team at LANDstudio set out to fill it with as much endemic vegetation as they could find. The lush sub-tropical garden now sits comfortably beside the modern family home, and acres of protected heathland stretching out towards Cape Byron on the horizon.

A beautiful home is something to behold, but a beautiful home surrounded by a beautiful garden (like yesterday’s home story!) is truly next level.

If you don’t have the chops to design and plant a garden yourself, it can be intimidating to know where to start. What’s actually involved in working with a garden designer? How long does it take? And the all-important question – how much does it cost?

When a reader asked us these questions recently, we realised we didn’t have the answers ourselves, so we asked a few of our expert friends to break down the entire process: landscape designer and Peachy Green founder, Fran Hale; founder and principal of Kathleen Murphy Landscape Design, Katheleen Murphy; landscape architect and director of Svalbe & Co, Katy Svalbe; landscape designer and director of Phillip Withers, Phil Withers; and Garden Life founder and director, Richard Unsworth.

Here’s everything you’ve ever wanted to know about working with a landscape designer!

If there was ever a test-case to convince doubters on the value of a landscape designer, then this revamped courtyard in Woodend by Kathleen Murphy Landscape Design (KLMD) is it.

Previously an uninspiring stretch of bare and bedraggled residential turf running beside the length of the house, the space is now a lush and functional outdoor room comprising timber decking, an outdoor seating area, pizza oven and integrated veggie patch. Transformations are one thing when you have good bones to work with, but here, KMLD has really made something from nothing.