Landscape Sutherland Shire

Why the Sutherland Shire Owners Call Us for Landscaping

The honest starting point for landscaping in the Sutherland Shire is that you are dealing with steep waterfront blocks reached only by stairs or a barrow run. Everything we specify follows from working with that rather than pretending it is not there.

We are based at Wentworthville and the Sutherland Shire is well inside our regular run, so a site visit is a short trip rather than a scheduling problem.

Landscaping work in the Sutherland Shire starts with the ground rather than the catalogue. Blocks here sit on sandy soils over Hawkesbury sandstone with clay pockets inland, and that single fact shapes footing depth, drainage and how long the finished job stays where you put it.

Every quote we write for the Sutherland Shire comes from a site visit. Call 0492 879 796 and we will arrange one at a time that suits.

Technical Notes on Landscaping

There is no premium in over-specifying something that was never going to fail. We put the money where the Sutherland Shire conditions actually attack the job, which is generally at ground level and at the fixings.

Where materials have to cope with salt-laden air off Bate Bay and Port Hacking that punishes untreated steel, we upgrade the fixings rather than the visible finish. Fixings are almost always what fails first in this part of southern Sydney.

• Mulch suppresses weeds and holds moisture, and the depth matters more than the type.
• A garden designed around how much time the owner actually has will look better in three years than an ambitious one that does not get attention.
• Landscaping is sequenced from the ground up, so drainage and levels are resolved before anything is planted or paved.
• Drainage falls are set at the excavation stage and cannot be corrected with surface material afterwards.
• The most common cause of a failed garden is planting the wrong species for the aspect rather than poor maintenance.

What Needs Approval in the Sutherland Shire

We can tell you what usually applies around the Sutherland Shire, and we will always recommend confirming the current position with Sutherland Shire Council before you commit. Controls change, and a wrong assumption is expensive to unwind.

Height, position and appearance are the three things most often controlled. In the Sutherland Shire, Sutherland Shire Council sets the local controls over the top of the state provisions, and forward of the building line is where they bite hardest.

Local Conditions That Change the Job

Site conditions here run to sandstone ridges and gullies falling to the Georges and Hacking waterways. Levels get set out and recorded before anything is ordered, because a change of grade halfway along a run is a design decision, not something to improvise around.

One thing specific to this part of southern Sydney is bushfire-prone land along the Royal National Park interface. It is easy to miss on a first look and expensive to discover once work has started.

Local housing stock is largely a wide spread from post-war brick to substantial waterfront rebuilds, and that tells you a lot about what is already in the ground: original service runs, old footings and the occasional buried slab nobody remembered.

When Landscaping Needs Replacing

Most landscaping enquiries we take in the Sutherland Shire come from the same place: a yard that holds water for days after rain. It is worth understanding why that happens here before deciding what to replace it with.

• Level changes that make most of the block unusable
• A series of small unconnected jobs that never added up to a finished yard
• Turf that will not establish because the aspect was never considered
• A garden that has outgrown its original layout

The Landscaping Formats We Build