Greenslopes ProjectWe redesigned a dead lawn, integrating a creek bed, Australian Natives, outdoor living room, a fern garden, garden lights, veggie bed and outdoor shower.
Bringing a tired, dead space back to life…
This project was a joy to bring together - what we started with plus the scope the client had allowed us to reimagine things extensively, exciting us all. This existing space was a struggling lawn and garden bed that died years ago, an unused laundry space and a rocky, dry hillside. This is how things began…
Any great garden starts with good soil.
The client wanted to create a useable outdoor space for their tenants - a young family. On the wish list was: turn the unused outdoor laundry area into an outdoor living room, revive the dead lawn area into a native garden with a feature seat, build a new vegetable garden bed, an outdoor shower that runs into a creekbed down the hillside.
Quite a list! We had our work stacked up against us, so we got planning - carefully compiling a list of native plants that could handle the difficult light situation (no direct sunlight in winter/ shade in summer). From the years of neglect, the soil of the site needed amending - it was very dry, compacted and low in organic matter and life. We treated the clay hillside with Gypsum and brought in a huge pile of fresh soil loaded with organic matter. We laid blue stone steppers on the new base ready to start building our little sanctuary…
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Forming the creek bed
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New soil is in, creek bed rocks too!
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Laying the blue stone steppers, feature bench seat
The little details
that matter…
So we got planting. We chose plants that reminded us of hiking in Queensland wilderness that meander through dry scrub to tropical forest. We aimed to accentuate and frame the plentiful natural rock, house timber and landscape that was present.
We laboured over precious details to create a stone walkway over the creek bed up to the new outdoor living space, encircled by a shaded fern garden. The garden feature bench looks onto flowering Kangaroo Paws, Hardenbergia, Dianella, Pennisetum, Pratia, Native Violet and Pandorea.
