These award-winning outdoor spaces that wrap around this Eastern Sydney home fuse formal and modern design influences
With its carefully considered combination of formal planting and hard landscaping, the elegant front garden is the perfect foil to the home’s contemporary, clean-lined facade. The garden, which was constructed by Eloquent Landscapes, working to a design by Myles Baldwin Design, has a sense of grandeur about it yet is decidedly modern.
“The client wanted a contemporary, formal garden to complement his impressive new home, and he wanted us to use advanced plants to ensure the garden had a well-established look from the outset,” explains Ziggy Kabbout, owner of Eloquent Landscapes. In the main front garden, the carefully thought-out planting scheme includes Buxus ‘Japonica’ (clipped into balls) and three 500-litre Pyrus ‘Burgundy Snow’. The vibrant green of the plants is offset by the sophisticated grey of the bluestone paving and the crisp white of the boundary and raised planter walls.
The project encompassed much more than the entry garden, however, and a great deal of behind-the-scenes work, along with a high level of construction expertise and attention to detail, was also involved. As an illustration of the latter, great precision was required to achieve the cross pattern banding in the front garden paving while installing the large, heavy pavers that form the path connecting front and rear gardens was a time- and labour-intensive task. Considerable skill was also needed to form up eight planter boxes, some of them rectangular, others square.
Likewise, excellent planning and careful time management were key. “In the rear garden, for example, we had to carefully time the hand excavation of two trenches along the side of the tennis court — one for the Ficus ‘Hilii’ hedging, the other for the Trachelospermum jasminoides,” says Ziggy.
“As the tennis court turf was to be installed within a week, the excavation, irrigation and planting needed to be completed within that timeframe so there would be no damage to the tennis court once the turf went down.”
The Eloquent Landscapes’ touch can also be seen in the rear outdoor entertaining area. This is comprised of an undercover tiled area and a cabana which is accessed through a glass pool gate. “The cabana is a standout feature thanks to its cactus-themed rooftop garden. Among the plants, many of which cascade over the edge, you will find Raphiolepsis ‘Oriental Pearl’, Santolina chamercyparyssus, Casuarina ‘Cousin It’, Agave stricta, Senecio mandraliscae, Cereus peruvianus ‘Monsterous Green’ and Opuntia microdaysis. The casual nature of the planting is a nice contrast to the formality of the front garden,” says Ziggy.
Clearly, the planting is the star of the show, whether it’s the extensive use of Buxus hedging, neatly clipped into square or round shapes, or the large feature planter in the front garden which is home to a 500-litre Olea ‘Europaea’ underplanted with Gardenia ‘Radicans’ and Senecio mandaliscae — but it’s the garden lighting that brings the spaces to life at night.
Thanks to Eloquent Landscapes’ skill, the outdoor spaces that wrap around the home now showcase the striking architecture to perfection — and, importantly, will maintain their good looks well into the future.
In recognition of the high calibre of the work, this project won Gold and Best in Category for Eloquent Landscapes in the Residential Construction Up To $50,000 category in The Landscape Association’s 2019 Landscape Excellence Awards.
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