Kristie & Simon’s garden, 17 Dallwood St, Epping
Designed by Brendan Moar, free form shapes complement the 1950s house. A ‘floating’ succulent cage, carved hebel and clipped box form a serpent winding through stone flagging. A dry river bed and world's coolest clothes line. Also feature. Succulents, grasses and native shrubs are framed by a large old Japanese maple.

Australia is the clever country and Australian gardeners are an ingenious bunch. We face more obstacles and challenges than most — little rain, drying wind, shallow soil, poor soils and crippling water restrictions. But these challenges can offer magical solutions. Here we visit a family garden that not only has a cutting edge design with a blend of useable spaces but requires very limited water resources to keep it looking good.

The family

Stay at home mum Kristie, and her chemist husband Simon realised it was time to move their expanding family to a place with more space, and purchased their post-war home in the suburbs three years ago. In doing so they were confronted with the choice of renovating an original home or knocking down and building something more generic.  While the cheaper option might have been the latter, they were keen to keep the original features of the house and with an empathetic hand, work with what was already there. Instead of putting money into making the house bigger they decided it would improve their quality of life to put the money into doing up the backyard giving them an ‘outdoor room’ for entertaining, playing and relaxation.

With the interior complete they now faced the insurmountable task of dealing with a block just over a quarter acre large. All the original garden features remain untouched – the hills hoist, sandstone flagging, “the shed” and the back deck balustrade reminiscent of a 1950’s cruise liner. A common problem faced by most home-owners lies at the back of the house, the connection between the house and garden, and this house was no exception.

So Kristie and Simon enlisted the help of landscape architect Brendan Moar. Their knight in shining armour quickly realised what they needed to retain, remove and redesign. And after the shock of the design process and Brendan’s funky ‘George Jetson’ feel to the garden, Kristie and Simon decided to take the plunge with a retro sixties inspired backyard that pays tribute to the era of their home, but provides a safe place for their small children to play and the adults to sit back, under shade, and enjoy life.

The garden

“In this design,“ says Brendan “I needed to develop a connection between the inside and the outside and completely redesign the backdoor, laundry and deck annex“. He did this by designing a baffle disguise to the ‘ugly’ back of the house. The baffle, constructed of marine ply and trim was matched up with the shed walls and fences to have a slightly Piet Mondrian feel to it and the colours soft blue, ice, white and taupe sit comfortably with the style of the home and striking blue-grey foliages within the garden. Mondrian was known for his horizontal and vertical lines with blocks of usually primary colours.

The other successful features of the garden are the bespoke shade structure and clothesline. The curvilinear steel ‘spaceship’ style pergola gives a central feature for the garden and is one of the most inspired and unique pergolas ever seen. Part of the pergola is covered with rolls of bamboo that allow shards of light to filter in creating a wonderful pattern of shadows of the floor. The semi circular clothesline coming off the back shed is hands down the best designed clothesline in Australia – and is a must-have take-home idea from the garden.

Plant choice  

The simple rule with dry loving plants is to choose the plants that are the perfect fit for your garden’s climate as they perform reliably, succumbs to fewer pests and disease and create impact.

Creating layers of planting will achieve a stunning and multi-dimensional garden. Try to emulate a city skyline with tall, squat, short and wide plants that mix it up and give it high drama. And talking about drama, you can’t go past the ‘look at me’ virtues of succulents. Succulents are used widely in this garden due to their extreme hardiness and intricate shapes. Brendan designed a living artwork for the back feature wall; made of a steel cage and packed with succulents of every colour imaginable. This is an interactive piece in the garden that Kristie takes particular pride in. She tidies, trims and tweaks the artwork, even propagating more succulents from leaves to fill empty spaces.

This garden showcases some sensational Australian plants and thrive in dry conditions. Its time to start meeting the ‘new’ Australian plants out there and realise the array of colours, fragrance, textures and flowers native plants have. You’ll be amazed at the array of wildlife you will attract and the sense of place it creates. Kangaroo paw are in glorious colour: keep the finished flowers pruned off at ground level and prune any black leaves off completely. Grevilleas rarely stop flowering attracting nectar loving birds such as lorikeets.

Why water?

Plants need regular water to get them established, for the first two years, and then little to no watering after this. They are ready for some tough love! Some will survive without any extra water while others will need the occasional drink in summer. Make the most out of proven performers and the vast array of new plant cultivars available that bring back the fun into gardening. These plants have been developed to use less water. They’ll quickly brighten up your day with their colourful display.