The brief for the back garden was to design a family friendly garden with preservation of an existing timber deck and creation of a lawn area for playing games, especially cricket! A theme of blue was requested by the owners - thus the choice of blue planter pots and soft furnishings, as well as blue salvia, blue miniature agapanthus and blue evergreen hydrangeas. The first photos of the completed garden show it to be quite sparse as small plants have been used. The later photos were taken in January 2014, 8 months after planting. Note, the fence has also been painted between photo shoots, which really improves the background on which to show off the plants.
The brief for the front garden was to provide street appeal, and to improve the functionality of the driveway; the screens for the bins interfered with access to the garage, and the mulch was always spilling off the steep banks onto the driveway. Creation of the new design required extensive excavation and careful positioning of large rocks. The initial proposal was for mudstone slabs, but in the end re-use of the volcanic rock already on site was settled on to reduce costs.
These photos were taken in January 2014, about 4 weeks after planting. The colour scheme is not yet evident, but is centred around a pallette of greens with highlights of orange-pink, orange (salvias, grevilleas, correas, arctotis and penstemon), white (star jasmine, white crape myrtle) and lime green (Acacia Lime Majik, variegated Mexican Lily, and Lime Wave lomandra). There is also mass planting of Poa labillardieri and feature planting with Agave americana.
