The owners of this architecturally designed home in St Lucia, Brisbane have lived here for more than two decades. In the time since, the home (originally designed by revered Queensland architectural firm Donovan Hill – now Partners Hill) has aged gracefully, but the garden required fresh attention.

So, recently, the homeowners engaged landscape architect Dan Young to redesign the central courtyard to suit the family’s changing needs. The result is a garden that matches the rhythms and materials of the residence, and strikes the crucial balance between aesthetic appeal and functionality. It’s a sub-tropical beauty!

Michael Bates of Bates Landscape started work on this garden 12 years ago, under different owners. Once the property was sold, the new custodians re-engaged the landscape designer to rework the garden, to complement a new renovation.

Centred around the new Madeleine Blanchfield-designed residence, a bold sculptural artwork, and a desire to activate all parts of the steep and windy site, Michael’s new garden layout connects a variety of functional and aesthetic pockets through a central lawn.

Each outdoor space in this vast and varied garden is its own moment!

There is something about the combination of spinach, feta, and fried dough that hits all the right comfort food notes, without being too heavy.

In this recipe inspired by a weekend snack ritual when shopping  at the farmer’s market, Julia Busuttil Nishimura creates the perfect pillowy pocket to stuff full of delicious fillings, especially for when those cravings hit – YUM!

A great garden can completely elevate a home. But it takes a pretty special garden to transport you to a totally different hemisphere! Despite being located in the summery eastern beaches of Sydney, this dreamy garden belonging to landscape designer Anthony Wyer could easily be on a sun-scorched Greek island.

Replete with a lush, layered planting palette, pool and a sandstone cabana cave, the Boulder House garden is like being on holiday, at home! What more can we say? It’s absolute heaven.

It has the makings of a great rom-com: tricky conditions (a sloping site and large established trees), an existing lover (a pre-ordered pool), conflicting desires (the clients being a family of five) and a dashing newcomer (Mcnuttndorf Landscapes). But these landscape designers + this Fairfield backyard = the best meet-cute ever!

From these many plot lines, director and designer Lori McNutt has created an undulating backyard wonderland. Replete with veggie beds, a gin deck, a pond-like pool and a rockery filled with everything from local indigenous species to large semi-tropical plants, it has everything each member of the family asked for. And all in the delicious embrace of surrounding majestic trees. It’s a love story with a happy ending!

Before Fig Landscapes got to it, this 1-acre block in Binna Burra in the New South Wales hinterland was an empty cow paddock filled with weeds and camphor. In fact, before the clients occupied it, there wasn’t even a house here.

On purchasing the property, the the new owners relocated a traditional Queenslander to the hill, and engaged Grant Boyle of Fig Landscapes to design a garden that would reconcile the old home with its new surrounds. The result is a relaxed country garden filled with native plantings and raw, earthy materials that complement the surrounding landscape. Oh, and a pretty dreamy plunge pool!

To say this garden has undergone a transformation would be an understatement.

What was recently a large, barren plot accompanying a newly-built home in Kenthurst (39 kilometres north-west of Sydney’s CBD) is now an absolutely thriving garden for its elderly owner.

The client’s brief can be boiled down to four key elements – accessibility, refuge, social opportunity, and views – but their main request was for flowers! The resulting design by Outdoor Establishments combines seasonal colour, mature trees, and bird-attracting species, delineated by stone walls and paved areas featuring textural travertine from Eco Outdoor, to create multiple zones for eating, lounging and enjoying the garden. The perfect outcome for an extended family who love to entertain!

The third day of winter and the fourth lockdown in Victoria means we’re back in comfort food mode – and this warm miso salmon bowl with udon noodles from Julia Busuttil Nishimura is bringing the cosy vibes!

Topped with grilled broccolini, a crunchy snap pea salad or really whatever’s in the fridge, this wholesome, tasty dish is going to get us through the cold months ahead.

In 2015, we visited the incredible Northern Rivers home of jewellery designer and landscape architect Lisa Hochhauser and her husband, Robert Bleakley. The couple’s home sits on the crest of a 120 acre hinterland property, surrounded by protected natural heath. At the time, work to cultivate ten acres of unprotected land for a residential garden had only recently been completed. 

Six years after our visit (and close to ten years since its initial completion), this garden has bloomed into full maturity. With a vision to return the land to the biodiverse wilderness it would have once been, Lisa and her team at LANDstudio set out to fill it with as much endemic vegetation as they could find. The lush sub-tropical garden now sits comfortably beside the modern family home, and acres of protected heathland stretching out towards Cape Byron on the horizon.

A beautiful home is something to behold, but a beautiful home surrounded by a beautiful garden (like yesterday’s home story!) is truly next level.

If you don’t have the chops to design and plant a garden yourself, it can be intimidating to know where to start. What’s actually involved in working with a garden designer? How long does it take? And the all-important question – how much does it cost?

When a reader asked us these questions recently, we realised we didn’t have the answers ourselves, so we asked a few of our expert friends to break down the entire process: landscape designer and Peachy Green founder, Fran Hale; founder and principal of Kathleen Murphy Landscape Design, Katheleen Murphy; landscape architect and director of Svalbe & Co, Katy Svalbe; landscape designer and director of Phillip Withers, Phil Withers; and Garden Life founder and director, Richard Unsworth.

Here’s everything you’ve ever wanted to know about working with a landscape designer!