Urban Courtyard Landscape designer Rick Eckersley believes that as properties are getting smaller, the multipurpose courtyard that doubles as a carport, an entertaining area, or a play area for children, is the way of the future. His garden design for a modern family...
Greek Pots At "The House of Zeus" in East Kew in Victoria, you won’t find the Greek king of the gods, but you will find some marvellous, hand made Mediterranean pottery. The pots are imported by Theo Kyrkilis, who set up his showroom with the aim of...
Urban Courtyard 2 When landscape designer Rick Eckersley first saw the tiny backyard of this Melbourne home, he was confronted by two small patches of badly drained, half dead lawn. Undeterred, Rick set to work on his design, aiming to create an extension of indoor...
Sydney graphic designer Elly Clark lives in a red brick block of flats with a rounded Art Deco influence. The building itself presents an interesting challenge, but Elly was really stumped when it came to her tiny, useless balcony. What could be done to make it look...
Cooking food outdoors on the barbecue is a great Aussie tradition, and nothing sums up the laid back, unpretentious nature of Australia better than the backyard barbie. Or does it? In recent years barbecues have moved upmarket and are now competing with the family car...
Don demonstrated how to transform a large courtyard into a stylish entertaining area using blue metal dust, an inexpensive but very classy looking material. A site analysis revealed several problems which needed to be addressed during the makeover: the white buildings...
In the winter when the garden is looking drab, camellias come to the rescue with their beautiful flowers and glossy green foliage. It’s natural to want to bring them inside and use them in flower arrangements, but the problem is they have very short stems and...
Cliffhanger House Imagine how hard it would be to build a house on a very steep site. Don visited an amazing cliffside house and chatted to the owners about some of the challenges they faced. As well as the difficult situation, they also had to cope with a partial...
Colour Combinations There’s no such thing as a bad colour but there are some bad colour combinations. Tracy Marsh shared a few tips and basic rules on using colour to decorate in your home. Simply stick to one colour theme; reds (pale pink through to crimson),...
Courtyard The owners of a newly renovated Melbourne house called in landscape designer Jim Fogarty to transform their garden into a modern, contemporary courtyard. This posed a few problems, because the area was only about 6x6m (20×20′), the side fences...