It is all relative to the entire property, the house and the yard. Is this a part of the pedestrian circulation or a seating area? Are there utilities adjacent, is it in the front yard and viewed by neighbors, or part of your private space. Is it viewed from the dining/living rooms or just from the bedrooms. Will it be used by tricycles or just feet (no golf shoes please). In my experience, (don't you hate it when someone starts off a sentence in which he offers advice with that phrase), the mondo grass is too large for any pedestrian pavement. There are a large variety of more prostrate plants you can walk on at your garden center, I expect. Some can be walked on daily, and others less often. Some are evergreen, some have attractive flowers, some are into more gray or smoky colors than just green. You can mix them up, just as you do with groundcovers in your plant beds. Enjoy!

Hello everybody, I have lived in Europe and also built several houses for which I have used blue stone. It is particularly in Belgium and Holland the most preferred natural stone for architects and home owners. You can of course for the cheaper ceramic tiles with a concrete or blue stone look but it will never be the same. The blue stone quarries have traditionally been in Belgium so you will see there lots of homes, streets and public buildings that are built with this stunning stone. You find it in different varieties (honed, polished, rough, etc..) and you can use it indoors as well as outdoors. We are going to build a hew house close to Sydney and will definitely go for blue stone both inside and outside, including the area around the swimming pool. In Australia, I have been told that blue stone is mainly quarried in Victoria. I am presently considering either to buy it there or to i port it from Belgium (which quality is slightly better and available in more varieties). Another very nice alternative is blue lime stone which in Australia is presently being imported from mainly Turkey. I have built with blue stone before and the result has always been much nicer than with granite, marble, travertin and of course also than the cheaper ceramic tiles that you find everywhere. We will probably combine the blue stone inside the house with underfloor (hydronic, not electric !) heating. Nice and cool in summer and pleasantly warm in winter.

I recommend you choose whichever tiles have coping tiles made from a single piece of material, NOT more than one piece glued together. The glued ones will eventually come unglued and you will be forever replacing them. Speaking from experience. Best wishes. They are both lovely. Looks like the ones in j2nd photo are larger than the Travertine Silver, or is that just the camera angle?

the fence screens out the view of the garden and makes the area feel enclosed... i'm wondering if there's an option to divide the 1.5 m drop into a two level deck so that the edge of the upper deck become a seat for the lower deck with less steps between and the lower level wide enough to satisfy the safety issues without some of the fence... but all ideas subject to exact dimensions and safety issues...hard to tell from the photos but is there a driveway down the side of the house to a garage?? please post a rough site plan showing the house with doors and windows from the house to the entertainment area and other buildings including distance between house and fences