A good house with a garden that had stopped trying.
At Cohen Street in Fairlight, the front garden was edged in dated stone, with a winding path and no off-street parking. Out the back, uneven ground and a small brick area surrounded the clients’ pizza oven, the one thing in the yard they loved. The brief was to give the property clean lines that matched the house, a level lawn, and a reason to spend evenings outside.
At the front, the old stone edging came out and a straight travertine path now runs from the footpath to the front steps. A 1.2-metre vertical hardwood batten fence sets the boundary without shouting, and a new driveway and parking area in recycled railway sleepers set into the ground give the car somewhere to go without turning the front yard into a slab. A hardwood designer screen replaced the old trellis between the two homes.
Down the side, broken pavers were repaired, the garden bed raised and levelled, and shade-tolerant tropical planting filled the passage.
Out the back, a series of low sandstone retaining walls turned uneven ground into a level lawn, with drainage behind every wall. The pizza oven got the courtyard it deserved: a paved square, with an L-shaped hardwood bench built around it.
The clients wanted to use their whole garden, front and back. That’s what we built.
