The Succulent Garden

Aesthetically, the client sought a dramatic, sculptural, and sophisticated courtyard entrance garden for their home. The most unique aspect of the project was the fact that it is really a roof garden, built on a suspended slab, and the client understood that only native and succulent plant choices would thrive in the hot, harsh, north-west, concreted space.  Our design response was to create ‘a living sculptural garden’. We wanted a bold plant palette which shone at night as well as during the day. An established native narrow-leaf Bottle tree Brachychiton rupestris was retained from the original garden and a second masonry planter box was built to contain a second Brachychiton rupestris to give the garden gravitas, mass and importantly, shade. The trees were teamed with other small native shrubs from Australia and water-wise cousins from South Africa, New Zealand, the Mediterranean areas of Europe and the desert areas of America.  Precast concrete slabs create a series of floating platforms which reduce the number of level changes and give the illusion of a more generous space.