An inspiring coastal garden

Jane explores the seaside garden of a landscaper and his family, who are helping redefine beach-house aesthetic, while creating areas for his children, for relaxing, and for the sites original flora and fauna.

This is the beach-side home of garden designer Peter Shaw and his wife Simone, who have built their dream home on this 1350sqm site by the ocean. The garden won an award for best use of plants in 2014 and is a great example of how you can blend inventive design with practicality while still caring for the remnant bush and local wildlife.

“We thought, ‘what does the land need – rather than what do we need – to make the house belong and to bring the birds back?’. You tend to take stuff away when you build ecologically so you’ve got to think about what you can put back into it. It’s not your 1400 metres or whatever, it’s part of a bigger picture, and something that doesn’t belong robs the place of its beauty,” Peter explained.
The Stringybark trees (Eucalyptus obliqua) dominated the block when the couple first visited the site and was one of the main attractions which led them to buy it. These stunning trees have not only been preserved by the Shaws - they form the incredible foundations to the design of the garden.
One of the first features of the landscape that draws the eye is the amazing “turf mounds” – constructed domes covered in grass under some of the older Stringybark trees. These are an unusual focal point - a place of relaxation - and they form the entrance to the predominantly native garden. Plants featured within the garden include White Correa (Correa alba), Correa reflexa, Lomandra longifolia cv. And Poa varieties, all selected because they will tolerate the coastal conditions, extremes of heat, dry periods, competition with trees and look amazing.
Other plants used as feature plantings across the landscape include Bougainvillea ‘Scarlet O’Hara’, utilised for a pop of bright crimson amongst the greens and greys, Gymea Lilies (Doryanthes excelsa) for foliage form, the Coastal Rosemary (Westringia fruticosa ‘Smokey’) and Sea Box (Alyxia buxifolia) clipped into loose balls, and the Western Coolabahs (Eucalyptus victrix) for the dramatic white and twisted trunks. Adjacent to a decking area surrounded by windows sits a Chinese Pistachio (Pistacia chinensis), a deciduous small tree planted so that the family can benefit from the shade provided in summer, the stunning autumn colour and the sunlight peeking through the bare branches over winter.

“The garden just needed to belong here, it had to be sympathetic to the location, but also respect the remnant vegetation and the local flora and fauna”.
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