Don’s Landscaping Tips: Outdoor Entertainment Area For many years pergolas have been fashionable in Australian backyards, either freestanding or attached to the back of the house. In theory if you plant deciduous climbers they’ll grow over your pergola and...
All too often backyards have a boring sameness about them, but recently Don visited a garden which dares to be different. When designer John Happ first saw the house, he knew that it was important to choose a paving colour to complement the strong, mottled orange...
Don’s Landscaping Tips: Window View Windows are essential in houses to let in light and fresh air. But a problem that is common to old and new houses is when a window looks straight out onto a fence or straight onto the neighbour’s house. What do you do to...
Formal Domestic Design The owners of this property did not want deciduous trees dropping leaves, and they didn’t want to spend a lot of time sweeping. Instead they chose a garden in the modern formal style, which makes good use of a number of elements: hedges,...
White Rooftop Garden Don discovered an ultra modern garden and entertainment area on the roof of a Melbourne office building. Jamie Loft, Landscape Designer and Company Director of the garden and pool design business ‘Out From The Blue’, gave Don a guided...
White Wall Makeover Don looked at a classic example of a problem faced by many gardeners: a stark, white wall. The owners had tried to soften the brickwork by planting a select variety of birch tree. Betula nigra (select form) ‘Tropical Birch’ grows...
Westbrook Garden Imagine having to create a garden on a steep, rocky hillside with very little soil, low rainfall and no town water. Against all the odds, Chris Coffey enthusiastically accepted the challenge of landscaping 1.5 hectares (3.5 acres) of land in the...
Grafton Art Garden Although gnomes and other garden ornaments are sometimes frowned upon, they are amazingly popular among all sorts of people. Even well known radio man Doug Mulray has pink flamingos in his garden. During a recent trip to Grafton the Burke’s...
Gregg Chapman’s Garden Don visited Gregg Chapman, landscape designer, and Nicole Faulkner, landscape architect, at their home in the Melbourne suburb of Brighton. They have transformed a dull and uninteresting garden into a beautifully designed, stylish garden...
Melbourne Apartment Gardens Courtyards adjoining tall buildings can be very difficult to landscape. There are often wind tunnels between the buildings; some areas bake in fierce reflected heat from the hard surfaces, while other areas are in full shade. Don looked at...