Perched high up in the Byron Bay hinterland, Charlie met with landscape designer Grant Boyle, founder of Fig Landscapes. He has created a garden full of amazing greenery and architectural elements and has shown Charlie around the peaceful landscape.
With the inclusion of a huge variety of native planting, this landscape-designed garden in Northern NSW is incredibly inspiring. Take a look at the scene he has created:
Why we love this garden
We’ve compiled our top three reasons why we love Grant Boyle’s design choices, and wish we had a garden like this in our backyard!
01
Native planting
The nature of our ancient land often means our gardens can be in unforgiving places – native plants can not only solve a multitude of these issues, but they can also be beautiful!
Quirky, colourful grevillea flowers, swaying ornamental grasses, lightning-bright banksia candlesticks and statuesque grass trees waving their tops in the breeze – there are so many positives about our native plants. Yet, they don’t get the credit they deserve, even though they’re more suited to our climate, require less water, and attract scuttling wildlife and a birds’ chorus of enchanting songs.
02
Mature grass trees
If your garden is on an escarpment and exposed to winds, as this garden in northern NSW is, grasses come into their own. They thrive in harsh conditions yet have a soft elegance as they sway in the breeze!
Make mature grass trees (Xanthorrhoea spp.) an architectural feature of your garden – they look awesome all year round, especially when they produce a flower spike several metres tall. Flowering time depends on the species.
If the globular forms of grass trees are a standout feature of your garden, as here, complement them with small, rounded shrubs, such as coastal rosemary (Westringia fruticosa) and Casuarina ‘Cousin It’, which can be either mounded or allowed to drape down your walls.
03
Incorporating vegie gardens
Incorporating your vegie plot and small orchard into your ornamental garden makes sense when you want to take full advantage of a sunny aspect. Here, a tree of ripening lemons resembling giant, golden baubles sing happiness against a backdrop of tall gum trees.
Adding in citrus trees and a vegie plot means this garden is not only aesthetic, but functional as well. With the large grass trees, ornamental shrubs and brightness of grevillea, the vegies blend seamlessly into the created landscape.
