The thing that really sold the house to us was the 180 degree view from the living area and kitchen windows. The thing that worried us most, yet also fascinated and challenged us, was the garden areas.
Remember this is a new build with just enough landscaping done to satisfy the local authority planning requirements. What had been done was to a very poor standard, which was amazing really when the house itself was so well designed and constructed. But, as the builder's project manager told us the landscaping was up to the landowner and not the builder.
Just like the blocks of land on either side of us, ours had been subdivided, enabling the respective landowners the chance to build two dwellings on each - one behind the other. As ours is the one to the rear, known in Australia as a"Battle-axe" or in the USA as a "Flagpole", we own the driveway and half the front area to its left. We consider that to be our roadside garden. However remember the Local Council own a strip between the kerb edge and the beginning of one's land, which in our case is wider than most because there is a huge water main under it. Property owners are expected to maintain the nature strip in front of their house, so most just put it down to grass and mow it. As a result of our wide nature strip, the houses are set well back giving us a large area of grass at the front.
The block of land is sloping downwards, so coming down our concrete drive is exactly that. Our house is tucked very neatly in around the corner from the drive, so as you approach the end of the slope you turn sharp right to the front porch and garage doors. This gives us a second area of garden in front of the porch.
Behind the garage is a very private, flat court-yard area bounded by the house and colourbond fencing separating us from the house between us and the road, and then from the next door block. This is our third garden area.
The fourth is the part running across the back of the house and round the western side towards the front porch. This looked an absolute nightmare. From the lowest point it seemed as if the house had been built on a cliff, looking out to the north. The western square sloped at all sorts of angles until it met the colourbond fence along the northern edge of our land, and was really quite dangerous.
We knew before we even made an offer on the house that putting this area into shape would take a lot of time and some major expenditure. We also said we would only buy the house if we could obtain permission to build a verandah right across the back.
Even before the house was ours, we were making plans for each area, but knew that whilst some works could be run side-by-side, others would have to wait. We decided what we could do ourselves and what needed professional expertise. We could do nothing in the back area until the verandah was built, so concentrated our thoughts on the other three.
close to the road front garden garage courtyard the verandah beyond the verandah return to new horizons top of page