This garden design was driven by the Arts and Crafts architecture of the house and the unique site which backs onto One Tree Hill farm paddocks. The clients were family focused, keen entertainers and eager to create an urban haven around their dream home.

The robust, quality materials of the house deserved landscape materials and features of similar weight and elegance. Extensive rock walls, wrought iron fences and gates and raised planters have been used to step the garden up the gradually rising site.

The front garden has a formal, restrained palette and small lawn featuring a mature Totara tree. The middle section is all about indoor-outdoor living – extensive limestone paved patios for entertaining and family gatherings, surrounded by lush, subtropical planting. Finally, graceful steps rise to the swimming pool/spa level. The informal, massed low planting covers the slope above the pool. It features large boulders extracted from the site and rustic steps to the park beyond.

The challenging rocky site required extensive excavation to carve out usable garden spaces. Its long, skinny shape also dictated the arrangement of landscape elements, but the result does not feel squeezed or dark. With little sense of bordering neighbours, your focus is on the surprisingly rural views of the park and the wide sky above.