Bushmead Front & Backyard Transformation
Small spaces on a tight block in the Bushmead estate, an existing landscape design and a sloping front yard that needed to come alive. Here’s how this garden transformation came together.
The Customer
With their new home in Bushmead complete, the homeowners were ready to turn their attention to the garden. They already had a landscape design from Sue at Wild About Gardens, a trusted independent designer we’ve worked with before, but some time had passed since the design was drawn up. They wanted to revisit a few things, particularly the front yard.
The Challenge
The sloping front yard was the kind of site where a design that looks straightforward on paper becomes more complex once you’re standing on the ground. Rather than fighting the slope, the landscape needed to work with it, with careful plant placement helping to create balance and make the most of the space.
The homeowners wanted a native garden with real presence, one that felt considered and connected to their new home, rather than simply filling the available garden beds.
The Solution
Tranquil Gardens worked from the existing Wild About Gardens design and refreshed the front yard specifically, incorporating Corten steel edging, feature grass trees and contrasting cracked pea gravel mulch to make the native garden come alive. The Corten steel edging was deliberately designed around the slope, turning it into the feature of the front yard.
What We Did
Site Preparation & Soil
Excess sand and soil removed to set the right finished levels for turf, planting, decking and mulch, followed by soil improvement, loams, clays and organics worked through to give the new garden the best start.
Structure & Features
Composite decking using Deckorator Voyage boards for minimal thermal expansion, bluestone steppers, feature rocks, a stainless steel cable trellis for climbing plants, Corten steel edging installed raw to develop its signature rust finish over time and a client-supplied water feature installed as part of the project.
Reticulation, Planting & Handover
A brand new automatic reticulation system across all areas: turf, planting and mulch, finished with a full aftercare guide and watering schedule to help establish the new lawn and plants.
The Outcome
Despite the tight, sloped block, the finished front yard uses the Corten steel edging and a mix of distinct zones to turn the slope into the garden’s defining feature rather than its limitation. The variety of shapes and materials makes the space feel noticeably larger than its actual footprint, a garden that time could be spent in, rather than just looked at from the window.
Got Your Own Design Sitting on Paper?
This transformation shows that even the trickiest blocks, sloped, tight, awkward, can become a garden that feels bigger and more welcoming than the site itself. If you’ve already got a landscape design sitting on paper and want it brought to life properly or refreshed to reflect what you want now, we’d love to help. Get in touch via the form below and we’ll get started.