Ashfield, Sydney NSW

A Gentle Heritage Heart

Our client wanted to have a garden that enabled both individual enjoyment and enough space for large family gatherings. Their garden was also being used for fitness and to accommodate a private hobby of producing hybrid orchids. This hobby was a relaxing activity for our client to wind down with after a challenging days work.

The Back Story

A beautiful home with such character within. Quickly sitting down with my clients, it became very apparent that our clients were looking for a Landscape Architect / Designer that was naturally able to appreciate their wishes, respect the homes history along with being able to bring a garden to their lives that felt in parity with the home itself. An honour to be placed into this driving seat.

My clients work life was one of high demand and emotion so the need for a garden to enable them to stop, breathe and just come down was paramount – a place to mentally re-group.

The Challenge

The challenges included:

Respecting the lands drainage runs and its inherent levels causing water penetration to old house foundations.
Connectivity with the internal rooms to that of the outer rooms.
Allow a balanced aspect of shade and sun whilst recognising there being a degree of sun intolerance within the home.
Creating large out door cooked meals.
Lack of privacy from neighbouring homes.
Making sure the newer structures where visually sympathetic to the heritage brick work and surrounding timbers / columns etc.

OUR SOLUTION

The projects list was not so much large in size but large in ‘I would likes’ making the design having to embrace each aspect not in isolation but in relation. This may sound obvious but there are never the same wishes in any garden creation simply due to the land, house and person living in this parcel of land let alone the outside influences of good and poor views.

We were also challenged by a garden that’s ground level fell back to the home so rather than just saying ‘well that’s the levels’ we chose to use the slope to our advantage and generate individual rooms within the entire space.

The way in which you drifted through the garden was so important. We chose to work with diagonals as much as was possible. Why? Well this gave the sense of the garden being larger and by default causes you to slow down as you drift from room to room.

Having been able to enjoy the space in its physical form after construction, it was a pleasure to be sitting in one of our designs after all the construction was complete and be able to feel the designs emotion in its physical form as oppose the documented form. An honour to be part of this family’s life to help bring that harmony to their lives let alone an investment to the homes asset.