Cottesloe Garden Stream
As a garden designer I have a bit of a design wish list that I have created for myself over the years and this project fulfilled two of the required criteria; it involved the creation of a natural stream as well as a kind ambient night time wonderland, something mysterious that I would have loved to explore as a child.
In this project we created a waterfall and stream around an existing pond. The project was particularly challenging as a large majority of the stone existed on site and had to be carefully removed by hand and then reassembled like a jig-saw into its new organic form. All of this had to occur while the goldfish and the native blue marron, a type of fresh water crayfish which are very sensitive to changes in water quality, lived in the existing pond.
When you work with natural and irregular stone pieces from site it is very difficult to give an exact design, more a design direction or an overall sense to the client of what you are trying to achieve. A relationship of trust was built on this project through the staging of the job into sections with the more involved and detailed work occurring in the latter stages.
Chris and Gail the clients had several requirements; they wanted to move around the pond and to be able to reach almost all parts of the terraced garden safely and they also requested that it be safe for their young grandchildren to traverse around the pond and have somewhere to sit and watch the aquatic nature show.
This was achieved through the creation of a natural limestone staircase, enclosing the pond, punctuated with informal sitting spaces and spiralling gently up towards the top of the garden.
Many of the plants were established palms which had to be worked around carefully. Gail, an avid gardener, had also requested that we incorporate plants she had saved and nurtured from her previous gardens, in particular an azalea that we planted into the ground after its 20 odd years of mobile living.
The garden was blessed with a large central Chinese Elm which created a kind of cooling effect in summer and allowed for the planting of shade tolerant foliage plants that I could never have considered in other gardens.
The garden stream itself was created using glacial river stones which were obtained from a local quarry in Western Australia. Each stone was expertly placed by Robert Campbell who is renowned for his work on natural streams and whose body of work is inspiring to me and many others.
Andrew Beck
In this project we created a waterfall and stream around an existing pond. The project was particularly challenging as a large majority of the stone existed on site and had to be carefully removed by hand and then reassembled like a jig-saw into its new organic form. All of this had to occur while the goldfish and the native blue marron, a type of fresh water crayfish which are very sensitive to changes in water quality, lived in the existing pond.
When you work with natural and irregular stone pieces from site it is very difficult to give an exact design, more a design direction or an overall sense to the client of what you are trying to achieve. A relationship of trust was built on this project through the staging of the job into sections with the more involved and detailed work occurring in the latter stages.
Chris and Gail the clients had several requirements; they wanted to move around the pond and to be able to reach almost all parts of the terraced garden safely and they also requested that it be safe for their young grandchildren to traverse around the pond and have somewhere to sit and watch the aquatic nature show.
This was achieved through the creation of a natural limestone staircase, enclosing the pond, punctuated with informal sitting spaces and spiralling gently up towards the top of the garden.
Many of the plants were established palms which had to be worked around carefully. Gail, an avid gardener, had also requested that we incorporate plants she had saved and nurtured from her previous gardens, in particular an azalea that we planted into the ground after its 20 odd years of mobile living.
The garden was blessed with a large central Chinese Elm which created a kind of cooling effect in summer and allowed for the planting of shade tolerant foliage plants that I could never have considered in other gardens.
The garden stream itself was created using glacial river stones which were obtained from a local quarry in Western Australia. Each stone was expertly placed by Robert Campbell who is renowned for his work on natural streams and whose body of work is inspiring to me and many others.
Andrew Beck
Country: Australia
