Steve Taylor, Mount Martha

We were approached by the client to prepare a landscape and pool design for their large sloping site in Mt Martha and the initial brief was extensive and all revolved around the idea of an entertainers heaven. Upon my first site visit the term sloping was quickly changed to severely undulating and the real challenge was made evident upon walking down the 8.5m of fall from the rear deck to the rear corner. The other challenge was to define a garden theme as the unique architecture of the home sat between a number of styles and didn’t strongly sit within a clearly defined pocket. Creating the garden style and theme needed to strategically belong to the unique architecture and surrounding coastal environment or in fact be the defining element that gave the home a real sense of belonging.
The brief specifics were as follows; a large family sized pool and spa with a possible wet edge that captures the view, a reworking of the homes rear deck to make it more liveable and remove the balustrade from the internal dining room vista, level terraces to make the nonfunctional rear yard more user friendly, a basketball area, fire pit space, built in tramp, level lawn areas, and eclectic, textural plant palette, natural coastal textures and materials, an outdoor shower, intimacy and privacy along with an overall relaxed coastal, yet sophisticated feel throughout.
The big hero of the rear yard is the stunning laguna pool which is flanked by locally sourced stone walls for privacy and drama. The wet deck spa adds a tricky, yet timeless feature to the area and the surrounding paved terraces offer ample space for sun lounging and relaxing. The wet edge captures the ocean and coastal foliage vistas perfectly whilst creating a stunning water feature from the garden levels. Clever and strategic design ensured a minimal site cut of only 1.4m for the entire site but in saying that the corner of the wet edge still sits approximately 2.6m above natural ground. The series of deck landings and steps leads you through the terraced garden beds from the home level to the pool level and then down to the fire pit garden. The raised garden beds around the rear home decks remove the requirement for balustrades and they keep the pool and ocean vistas clear from obstruction. The lower fire pit zone and pathways introduce curves into the design to soften the heavily structured, dominant pool zones. These curves also create a tapestry of form and function from the alfresco decks above. An informal pathway leads you down through the modern coastal and classic plants combinations through to the rolling lawn areas whilst the more formal paved steps provides a more structured transition to the lower garden. The banked garden beds throughout offer an eclectic mix of foliage, form and colour to soften the space with a clever balance of disorder to order. The basketball area sits off to the side of the property and is out of the way from the key view ports to ensure the aesthetic potential is maximised without the unsightly hinderance of the obvious.
The lower lawns are all about clean, open, usable kids play space while also offer some “white space” to balance out the upper, more structured zones. A built-in tramp offers another destination within the garden for the young at heart. Locally quarried boulders were used to create natural retainers so we could keep the existing eucalypts on site.
Aesthetically you have a visually striking, timeless, sophisticated yet relaxed beautiful rear garden that perfectly frames, if not enhances, the stunning and priceless Port Phillip Bay and bush views beyond.