Native texture, sculpted with intent

Our client had recently completed a significant renovation of his commercial property in Botany.  Newly rendered and finished with polished concrete, the building looked smart but the street frontage garden beds needed complete makeovers. The compacted, bare soil was littered with left over concrete rubble, broken sleepers and a few scraggly weeds.  To contain the new beds, the small retaining wall also needed rebuilding. The brief was simple, clean it up, green it up and focus on native, low maintenance plants.

The site presented a few issues we needed to overcome. This commercial site had suffered years of passing traffic and pollution and the sandy soil that Botany is renowned for is very low in nutrients and has little water retention. We chose a design and plants that would thrive going forward and not just look great for one season.  Being a commercial property we understood there would be no hand watering and very little ongoing maintenance.

Having chosen an all-native palette of plants proven to thrive in sandy coastal soils, we carefully considered their projected height and light requirements and designed an interesting scape including Banksia integrefolia, Bottlebrush, Grevillea and Callistemon.

We installed a drip irrigation system with two manual adjustable timers in the raised beds, crucial for the changing seasons and surrounded the plants with a thick layer of cypress woodchip mulch to suppress weeds and retain moisture.  With the new hardwood timber retaining wall, this now welcoming commercial property’s transformation was complete.