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.
You might recall late last year we shared a little video featuring a day…
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!
This is what happened when alive\’s Publisher, Ryan Benn, travelled to Africa with Thrive—an incredible nonprofit that\’s growing change in impoverished areas.It’s a mild summer evening in Kenya, a plac
Bundjalung/Minjungbal woman Emma Rolls remembers the exact moment she decided to take the leap…
There’s no two ways about it: Lana Launay loves lamps. When the Sydneysider made a hasty departure from New York last year as the pandemic accelerated, she turned to weaving as a creative outlet while she worked out what to do next. As it transpired, the weaving was the next step!
When she’s not working for cult jewellery designer Lucy Folk, Lana designs and handweaves earthy-toned lampshades from her home in Darlington or her mother’s art studio in North Curl Curl Beach, under her own brand, Shades Lanay. Whether conical, cubed or cylindrical, each one-of-a-kind design is crafted from natural materials like coffee-stained raffia, coconut shell rope and bamboo yarn. We love them!
Harrison Balodis was housesitting a cottage in Pambula, on the Sapphire Coast of New South Wales for two weeks in 2012. He instantly fell in love with this quaint little place, in the centre of town. He told the owner he would be the first in line to purchase if she ever decided to sell. Four years later, he got the call.
In 2016, Harrison and his partner Miranda O’Rourke packed up their lives in Sydney and moved south to set up their new home in the 150-year-old cottage. They embarked on a big DIY renovation and restoration project, enlisting local friends to help with the building and scouring op-shops for all the perfect interior pieces.
Two years later, and they opened up their beloved cottage home as a holiday rental – Lotte’s Hjem, named after the owner Harrison had bought it from. Whilst interstate travel may be temporarily off the cards for some of us, we’re definitely earmarking this cosy coastal cottage for future holiday plans!
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!
