Landscape Design & Softscaping — Burnside, Toorak Gardens & Adelaide's East

Landscape design that starts with the plants, not the paving

Most landscape design in Adelaide starts with hard surfaces and fills the gaps with whatever the nursery has on special. I work the other way around. As a qualified horticulturist (Certificate III, and currently studying garden design), I begin with your soil, your aspect and how you actually use the yard, then build a planting plan that will still look right in five years. Hardscaping is brought in where it earns its place.

That approach suits the character homes of Burnside, Toorak Gardens, Rose Park and Kensington Park, where a garden has to sit comfortably against a bluestone villa or a 1920s bungalow, and it suits new builds in Magill and Campbelltown that need structure from day one.

Garden design Adelaide homeowners can live with

A good garden design for Adelaide has to survive 40-degree January days on tank water and a wet, cold July on heavy clay. I lean on plants that do both: Westringia, Correa and Lomandra for structure, Salvias and Kangaroo Paw for colour, and productive trees where there is room. If you want a native garden design for bees and birds, a Mediterranean courtyard, or a cottage-style front yard that still looks tidy in autumn, the plan is drawn around that.

• On-site consultation and site assessment (sun, drainage, soil, existing trees)
• Planting plan with plant list, quantities and positions
• Softscaping: bed preparation, soil improvement, planting, mulching and edging
• Hedge and screening installation
• Drip irrigation design and installation so the new garden establishes properly
• Staged plans if you would rather build the garden over a couple of seasons

Softscaping, done properly

Softscaping is the living half of landscaping: soil, plants, mulch and water. It is also where most Adelaide gardens fail, usually because the soil was never improved and the irrigation was never finished. On every job I condition the beds with compost and gypsum where the clay needs it, plant at the right depth and spacing, mulch to the right thickness, and run a drip line before the plants go in, not after.

I also install and repair irrigation as a service on its own, and most new gardens get a timer so the first summer is not left to chance.

What happens at a design consultation

The first visit is a walk around the garden with a notebook, not a sales pitch. I look at where the sun falls in summer and winter, where water pools after rain, what the soil does when you dig a spade in, which existing plants are worth keeping and which are quietly dying. We talk about how you use the space: kids, dogs, entertaining, vegetables, privacy from the neighbours, how much time you honestly want to spend maintaining it. From that I draw a planting plan to scale, with a plant list you can take to a nursery or have me supply and plant. Most eastern-suburbs gardens are done in one or two stages, beds first and lawn or irrigation next, so the budget is spread and nothing is planted in the wrong season.

Where I design and build gardens

Garden Grit is based in Norwood and travels up to 20 km, which covers Burnside, Toorak Gardens, Rose Park, Kensington Park, Magill, St Peters, Walkerville and the rest of Adelaide's eastern and north-eastern suburbs. Smaller design jobs, such as a single front bed or a courtyard refresh, are welcome.