Note: This garden was opened in 2018
This garden takes pride of place in one of Ballarat’s busiest spots, and has been a talking point, long before we arrived. The house that overlooks this triangular outdoor space has its own fascinating style and history, including being a pub many years ago.
Our clients are well travelled, and they wanted little pieces of these overseas memories to be integrated in their own space at home. It is an area overlooked from inside and out, so it needed to be visually appealing from so many different angles.
Large granite boulders form the boundary fence, so our design opted to raise the levels on the inside to give some height balance, bring planting closer to eyeline, and reduce some of the granite’s dominance in the area. We started again except for three olive trees that now stand together in the lawn, these along with other plants bring a little of that taste of Italy that the clients were wanting.
As this area is essentially the ‘backyard’, we included pleached bay trees all the way around the boundary that will be maintained to give us a brilliant ‘upside down hedge’. The central curving arbour, inspired by one of the home’s rooflines, brings together the narrowing sight lines we created toward the point of the block. It captures the water feature and backdrop Tilia beautifully. Steps were created near the side gate to retain our level lawn section and have proven to be one of the features of the garden. And last but never the least, garden lighting throughout brings this garden to life at night, highlighting feature trees, the water feature and illuminating pathways.