Completed 2024
Landscape Design : Cathy Apps, Catnik Design Studio
This newly constructed contemporary home called for a vibrant, Australiana-inspired garden that reflects the clients’ love of native plants. The design embraces the bold colours of the home’s exterior and interior palette, creating a cohesive connection between house and garden.
The result is a landscape designed for movement and immersion — one that invites exploration and engagement from both inside the home and while spending time outdoors, all without the need for traditional lawn areas.
A mix of exotic and native species provides texture and resilience. Drought-tolerant plantings such as Kangaroo Paw, Lomandra, and flowering perennials ensure year-round interest and colour with minimal maintenance, giving the front garden a lively yet low-care character.
This space and adjoining utility area required hardy landscaping to withstand the intense afternoon sun. As the first garden space visible on entering the home — and viewed from the master bedroom — the courtyard was designed as a calm, immersive sanctuary.
A challenging triangular layout was softened using native species and a sculptural Euphorbia tree, providing evergreen structure and visual contrast. Fast-growing evergreen climbers trained on mesh trellising offer privacy, shade, and a sense of enclosure.
The brief for this area focused on movement and accessibility. Permeable paths of crushed limestone edged in Cor-Ten steel provide easy circulation and assist with maintenance. Strategically placed rocks add height and a naturalistic structure, giving the garden an established, grounded feel even in its early stages. As the native plantings mature, the boundary lines will gradually blur, further enhancing the sense of immersion.
Viewed from the clients’ study, this courtyard offers a tranquil visual connection to nature. Morning sunlight filters across the space, attracting birds, bees, and butterflies. A feature standard Grevillea anchors the design, surrounded by complementary native plantings that bring colour and movement throughout the day.
