The home needed nothing, but the external spaces had not been touched in a long time and required upgrading.
The rear external areas of this property had been terraced to create vegetable gardens using sandstone blocks to create the retaining walls. Great for vegetables but not suitable for the new owner’s young family.
much of the original material which effectively gave us free reign to do as we pleased as the clients knew our work from their previous project and trusted our judgement.
There were to be three distinct areas to be designed and developed, the side area which bordered onto a main road with little privacy, the second area was the main entrance and driveway to the property and the third being the rear garden areas.
The side area which bordered onto a main road, and we created the desired privacy with the inclusion of a 2-metre-high dressed timber lapped and capped fence and supplementary hedge planting. Sandstone blocks removed from the terraced vegetable gardens and dilapidated driveway were utilised together with a period brick border to create a reflective court. We truncated the length of the space as it appeared disproportionally long by creating a traditionally fenced utility area and at the other end wrapping the rear lawn area around the home.
The reflective court was surrounded by traditional plantings of Buxus japonica (Japanese box), Magnolia 'Little Gem' (Gem Magnolia) and Buxus sempervirens (English box), Salvia 'Mystic Spires' (Mystic Salvia), Salvia Pink Spires' (Pink Salvia), Clivea miniata (Clivea), Gardenia florida (Florists Gardenia), Cupressus ‘skyrocket nana’ (Dwarf Cupressus) and numerous topiaries.
The main pedestrian entrance to the property was originally via the driveway. We separated the two areas, removed the dilapidated sandstone block driveway and reinstated it with a recessive concrete paved area. The pedestrian path we redirected to the street designed a period fence and gated entry and created distance between the two areas with sculptural planting and pebble much. We reinstated a traditional balustrade to the perimeter of the front veranda to further delineate the two areas and utilised the sandstone recovered from the driveway as paving in the reflective court.
We continued the traditional white pebbled mulch to the front of the residence to connect to the traditionally fenced utility area.
The rear garden area had been designed as terraced vegetable gardens using sandstone blocks as the retaining walls. We removed the sandstone for later use and created a level lawn that wrapped around the home to link to the reflective court with the use of wide generous steps.
We stepped the other end of the lawn area at a strategic position along the line of a studio apartment using stockpiled sandstone blocks. This had the effect of reducing the length which in turn visually extended the width of the lawn. A secondary lawn area was developed at a level to relate to the studio apartment.
The external areas upgraded according to designs prepared by A Total Concept helped create a suburb record sale when recently marketed.
