Landscape Design Brisbane Part Two

In the last article on Landscape Design in Brisbane we took a brief look at the history of Brisbane and Landscape design. In this article we will look at iconic garden features in Brisbane and the kinds of plants that soak up Brisbane’s varied weather.

The Great Aussie Retaining Wall

Iconic Brisbane landscape Feature?

If the Queenslander house is the quintessential Brisbane abode, then the retaining wall must be the iconic Brisbane garden feature. I assert that most of Brisbane’s suburban housing will have some form of retaining wall structure in the garden. Whether the property has rendered block retaining walls delineating a driveway, or gabion style retaining walls defining an outdoor dining area, or hardwood sleepers supporting a sandpit most houses in Brisbane will have altered the landscape for some of the very reasons the early Brisbane housing designers chose to elevate the living areas above it. Often the local landscape is made up of hilly, rough and uneven land, as there is little truly flat land outside of the floodplains. Queenslanders tend to be outdoor types who love to be in the sunshine, soaking up the beautiful Brisbane weather. Which is exactly why many Queenslanders will have their yards re-sculpted to create great outside entertainment areas, play areas for their kids and almost as common as a retaining wall, the great Aussie back yard pool.

Planting For Every Possibility.

Once the soil has been prepared, the garden beds dug and retaining walls embedded in place, then the work of picking plants to cope with the wide fluctuations in Queensland weather is the final task of any Landscape designer.

Here the Landscape designer must take into consideration natural watercourses through the property, how well the soil drains, how the property is aspected and where the sun is at its most glaring in the garden.

Luckily enough, Brisbane native plants tend to be the best bet in Brisbane gardens. They have adapted to the tumultuous Queensland conditions over generations of evolution. Although, there are many other lovely varietals that will blossom just as beautifully as any Brisbane bloom.

There is such an extensive range of native flora to decorate our gardens with such as the Brisbane Wattle Acacia Fimbriata, which will thrive in almost any soil conditions, to the Brisbane River Lily Crinum Pendunculatum which not only thrives in very wet conditions but also acts as a home and haven for native lizards intent on eating insects the plant attracts.

Yucca Elephantipes

An expert Landscape designer will be able to plant out your garden for year round colour with such plants as the Aloe Sirius (For more info on this attractive plant please click here). For long lasting durability, resistance to the extremes of seasons we ‘enjoy’ here in Brisbane, and for the level of maintenance that will best suit our lifestyles, many modern gardeners are turning to the Giant Yucca Yucca Elephantipes or Yucca Guatamalensis. This hardy succulent originates from Central America but has been widely spread throughout the world due to its incredibly hardy disposition. Giant Yucca’s thrive in hot dry conditions, but can just as easily weather wet and rainy conditions as long as they have good drainage, perfect for a majority of Brisbane’s gravel soil composition. Giant Yuccas live up to their name and can grow up to 10 metres in height in ideal conditions, so make sure you have enough room for this impressive garden feature.
 
To see a superb specimen of the Giant Yucca, treat the family to a day out in the Spectacle Garden at the Roma Street Parklands and take one of the guided walks around one of Australia’s greatest gardens.

For excellent Landscape Design Brisbane visit the Website or Click Here or http://www.mylandscapedesign.com.au/

Landscape Design In Brisbane.

Every city we visit has a defined character of its own. When we think of the City of Sydney we may see a scintillating blue harbour framed by the arching Bridge and sparkling city lights. Or Perth where the wide open sandy spaces are cut by the broad Swan River. Each and every city will present a specific set of challenges for the dedicated landscape designer. The rolling hills and flood plains of Brisbane present a very different challenge to the landscape designer than the expansive desert and sandy soils of Perth.

Landmark Brisbane

IF you were to fly into Brisbane city your eye would be caught by the Brisbane River snaking its way through the suburbs, around the city and emptying into the ocean at Moreton Bay. You can clearly see the floodplain and the many creeks that criss-cross the urban sprawl. Small hills like Chapel Hill and low-lying mountains such as Mount Cootha dot the landscape that has been slowly eroded by the ponderous and powerful Brisbane River.

Brisbane was first settled in 1823 at Redcliffe, but the settlement moved one year later to the cradle of Brisbane, North Quay. However, it wasn’t until the 1840’s that the most iconic suburban dwellings in Australia began construction – The Queenslander.

The design of the Queenslander epitomises design principles for Brisbane Landscape Architects as the Queenslander copes with the same varied weather and terrain factors that any landscape architect must plan for. The most salient feature of the Queenslander design is the raised platform for living space, coupled with expansive verandahs that allow for easy indoor/outdoor living. Raising the house on stumps separates the living space from floods, pests and termites and also grants greater cooling capacity to the house. Raising the house on stumps also compensates for the fact that most of Brisbane’s building blocks are not level and can be variously affected by flood or drought. Just as the Queenslander design of home is uniquely design to cope with Brisbane weather, it takes an accomplished Landscape designer to plan a great garden in Brisbane.

It’s All In The Soil.

Brisbane has been blessed with a variety of soil types, from rich dark alluvial soils of the flood plains to deep red loamy soils gracing the many hills and valleys of Brisbane, to the most common gravelly red and yellow loam mixture that tops a hard compacted clay base.

It is a mixed blessing however as some soils, such as loamy and alluvial soils tend to be richer than their gravellier counterparts. Unfortunately the gravel soils are the most commonly found, and to be honest most of the soil in Brisbane is a little tired and lacking nutrients owing to nearly 200 years of habitation. So building up the soil is a key consideration in any landscape design plan. Building up the soil can done in a variety of ways, by adding rich mulch to sandy soils, breaking
up clay based soil for better drainage, or adding matured compost to revitalize tired earth. Other methods to build soil include completely restructuring the topography of a garden. One of the best ways to do this is with retaining walls.

In our next article on Landscape design in Brisbane join us as we explore more features of Landscape design in Brisbane. Or visit Brisbane Landscaping or My Landscape Design Brisbane or Visit the website.

Biodiversity in Landscaping

Throughout the world, across the span of time and the breadth of culture one pursuit has seen a sustained passion for mankind; The noble art of Landscaping. From the earliest times we have altered our environment to suit our needs and our desires. Whether that was to build farms, fields, cities or fortifications we have sawn, hewed, carved and chopped our way to a kind of mastery over the land. We can construct a mountain, well, little ones at least; we can create vast gorges and flatten hills. Through the use of machines weighing over 13,000 tonnes we can carve whole new waterways, create vistas where there were none before and arrange the lie of the land to our design.

Plants also become our instruments, whether for the production of food, medicine or for decorations in our gardens we hold dominion over the plant world and the keys to the kingdom are the secrets of genetics. We can breed roses to be frost resistant and bloom brighter and have more pungent odours. Splicing and grafting have been techniques of altering genetic strains to produce more viable crops, hardier plants or tastier foodstuffs for many years, yet never before have we been able to directly manipulate the DNA code.

Cultures around the world have maintained biodiversity in food strains, from the rainbow hued corn of South America to the wild varieties of rice that seed in secluded paddies throughout Asia.
Yet now the diversity is being threatened, the keys to the kingdom of food are being held to ransom and the price? The homogenisation of all the food in the world.

Do you want your garden to look like everyone else’s? That each sculpture you put in place is proscribed? That each strain of plant you place is limited by the few that will suit all climates and grow to carefully encoded dimensions? No more wild nature, not even the semblance of wilderness, and no choice, our ability to decide what we will eat will be determined by who owns the seed stock. Our ability to enjoy a richness of delights from our gardens and the gardens of those we know will be decided not in our cozy homes, by the fire, planning out what to plant for the coming season, no. What we get to eat will be decided in laboratories and courtrooms.  Far from any of the structures of democracy the fate of the worlds food resources will be brewed in a test tube.

If you are reading this and have any interest or care for the land, the people and the plants of this planet then please do some more research on the topics I have raised. There are ways of taking action to preserve the biodiversity of the plant kingdom and there are many avenues to digitally, vocally and physically lend support to doing something about the threat to our food. Of all the things fundamental to life it is water and food. This is one issue worth standing up about.

Thankyou for reading.

Written by Jamie Grant for A&R Evergreen Landscape Construction and Design Brisbane

The Principles Of Landscaping

Principles of Landscaping.

Humankind has always sought to alter the landscape to suit our purposes. Whether that be for agriculture, construction, mining or even beautification of our surroundings. Landscaping has been a part of civilization since man began the agrarian path ten thousand years ago. From clearing fields and creating common grounds for community gatherings we have always sought to alter our environment to suit our means. As society has become more sophisticated has meant that the ways in which we interact with our environment has also become more sophisticated.  Through our observation of natural phenomena and the rules of the universe such as the golden mean and the rule of three means that we have begun to see the way in which nature arranges itself and that which is pleasing to the human senses. Today we will have a brief look at some of the elements of Landscape design.

The Australian Institute of Landscape Architects have released statements about some principles of Landscape design. They are:

 

Protect

Where possible Landscape design seeks to protect the naturally occurring features and ecosystem of a location. This serves to create a contiguous landscape, where the local flora is represented with the design plan. Often ecosystems develop a harmonious relationship between flora and fauna, where only particular plants. For example, most of us at least know that koalas eat gum leaves, some know that it is only specific gum leaves and fewer still would know that in particular regions koalas prefer differing gum leaves, still fewer folk would know that Koalas will also eat paperbark, tea tree, wattle and even pine.
So if you were a landscape designer and there was a Koalao colony in the locality you would have to find out which species of local gum the koalas preferred and include those plants in a design brief.

Enhance

The preservation of local resources, highlighting the natural beauty of an area, mitigating deleterious impacts of human interaction all serve to enhance the sustainability and natural beauty of an area. The tenets of this principle are creativity and sustainability. The highlighting of naturally occurring beauty to be more attractive to the human eye may be done by planting natural species according to design principle of threes i.e planting species in groups of three will make these installations more noticeable and attractive.

Sustainability ensures that the design is long lasting, that the plants are companionable, in that the presence of that plant does not negatively impact the environment. For example the use of Lantana is common in Perth gardens, where as Lantana in the northern rivers region of N.S.W. is a virulent pest and would never be included in a plan for that area.

Regenerate

A design should include any regeneration of natural ecosystems and environment if they were damaged due to natural, or human means. This may mean that the Landscape designer researches the composition of the flora prior to the damage and plants the area according to the naturally occurring ecosystem.

For all of your local Landscaping Brisbane  please contact us at  http://www.mylandscapedesign.com.au

Thanks for reading

Written by Jamie Grant for A&R Evergreen Landscaping Brisbane. Landscapes Of Distinction.