Australian Garden

West Pennant Hills

Located in West Pennant Hills, this long narrow property backs onto the Koala Park. It is surrounded by the sounds of wildlife and beautiful old gums with the occasional visitor jumping the back fence. A peacock has discovered the vegetable garden and regularly pays a visit to feast in the raised beds. Across the property runs a deep drainage swale, the obvious location for a dry riverbed, and in heavy rain it turns into a flowing creek.

The concept grew from two corten steel decorative panels the client had bought at auction, and the surrounding native vegetation. This lead to a rustic Australian native garden with corten steel edging and rusty corrugated iron panels to hide the fence. The stools in the fire pit area came from a beautiful Sydney Red Gum that had to be removed from in front of the Designer’s own house. There is some consolation – part of it gets to go on. Behind the pergola a Photinia hedge (one of the few non-natives in the garden) runs across the property, with an arbour in the middle. This leads into an extensive orchard and kitchen garden area. Around the perimeter are fig trees, oranges, lemons, pomegranates and mangoes with raised planter boxes for herbs and vegetables through the middle.

What was once a long open expanse of lawn has turned into a delightful native garden, flowering at different times of the year, full of colour and fragrance.