Watling Residence, Coolbina

The brief entailed creating a garden that celebrates the diversity of the WA South-West flora. We extrapolated this idea to explore how hardscape materials, colours, textures, garden elements and artwork can be melded into the design composition, to enhance this notion. The comfortable way in which the house appears grounded in its context, albeit on a very tight plot of land, suggests that this approach has been successful.

Specifically, the design has achieved the following:

The front garden includes an interplay of staggered low blade walls and floating rectangular paving pads separated and softened by low planting and carefully positioned trees to give depth to the garden, create a sense of discovery and arrival, and echo and reinforces the front façade.   Planting on slab over the garage further helps bed the house into the landscape.

In the rear garden, a series of well-articulated and interconnected terraced spaces respond to the awkward block shape and slope, resulting in a variety of outdoor recreation and entertaining spaces.   The design achieves an uninterrupted visual connection from the house and upper terraces to the park, such that it becomes a borrowed landscape.   The materiality, colours and rectilinear forms of the vertical planes in the garden echo and reinforce the rear façade of the house.

• The front garden includes an interplay of staggered low blade walls and floating rectangular paving pads separated and softened by low planting and carefully positioned trees to give depth to the garden, create a sense of discovery and arrival, and echo and reinforces the front façade.   Planting on slab over the garage further helps bed the house into the landscape.
• In the rear garden, a series of well-articulated and interconnected terraced spaces respond to the awkward block shape and slope, resulting in a variety of outdoor recreation and entertaining spaces.   The design achieves an uninterrupted visual connection from the house and upper terraces to the park, such that it becomes a borrowed landscape.   The materiality, colours and rectilinear forms of the vertical planes in the garden echo and reinforce the rear façade of the house.

The joy expressed by the client of being in and experiencing the garden is our measure of success.

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