For 20 years Jane Wallace hated the mess of bedraggled plants that limped along in the front yard of her semi in Sydney’s Bondi Beach.
The pavers were “higgledy-piggledy”. That made it difficult to carry shopping, and risky for her ageing mother to traverse what she called a “janky dogleg” of a path to the front door.
When the neighbour across the street planted the verge with Australian natives, it was contagious. Wallace and seven other home owners got the bug, too.
Now flannel flowers are blooming and natives are growing, including ferns and bracken around an old Melaleuca quinquenervia tree on the verge and front yard. It makes visitors feel like they’ve stumbled into a quiet corner of a national park in one of Sydney’s busiest suburbs.
The 35 square metre project called Big Little Bondi garden by Bushy Landscapes co-directors Liz and Erryn Blacklock – who did many verges in Wallace’s street – has won the prize for best small residential garden in the first Landscape Australia Awards.
Jury chair and the editor of Landscape Australia, Emily Wong, said the winners were innovative and practical: “They show how anyone can turn a space into a thriving garden, apply urban rewilding research, and drive real change in their local communities.”
The awards were designed to move away from a focus on aesthetics to those that engage the public in learning about ecology, place, biodiversity and the changing climate.
Liz Blacklock of the ecological practice said the design was based on research, which identified critically endangered Eastern Suburbs banksia scrub as the site’s local ecosystem.
Rather than treating the Bondi front yard as a “decorative space”, the project demonstrated how a small residential garden could contribute to urban biodiversity, ecological resilience and community experience.
It also challenged the conventional suburban front garden by dissolving boundaries – after getting approval from Waverley Council for the verge – between private and public land.
Wallace said many people stop to look at the garden, and take photos of the flannel flowers. Other people know her garden, but not her. “They say, ‘I love your garden.’ That makes me feel smug and proud … proud smug … That I have done something that benefited other people.”
The winner of the prize for a large residential project was the Winter Garden, the transformation of a Victorian country tennis court by Timothy Mitchell Landscape Architecture into an experimental garden.
Other winners included the Archerfield Wetlands in Brisbane, the Wurundjeri Biik garden in Melbourne, the Birrarung trial floating wetlands project, and the planning for the Central Park in Sydney’s new Bradfield City that has been approved and planned.
Winners included the University of Melbourne’s Woody Meadow project , a 10-year project showcasing the beauty and resilience of Australian shrubs. Now there are 59 woody meadows across Australia, including in Ku-ring-gai’s St Ives where the flowers attract insects, native bees and birds.
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