This new contemporary home required a complementary sub-tropical garden, while maintaining complete practicality due to the horse stables, horse round yards, riding arena, chicken coup and aviary that was required for keeping many well-loved animals. To achieve this, a number of challenges needed to be overcome, starting with the fact the location and exposed nature of the site meant the plantings needed to withstand some very harsh conditions, including extreme heat in summer and bitter frosts in winter, as well as prevailing winds. To counter this, we added to the nature strip surrounding the property, increasing the planting to improve privacy and assisting in creating a wind breaks to the gardens – as well as providing a habitat for birds and native wild life. The garden areas around the main driveway and entry pathways, pool surrounds and spaces around the house were filled with a mixture of hardy plants with a sub-tropical bent, such as Frangipani’s, N.Z. Flax, Yucca’s, Gardenia’s, Murraya and Bird-of-Paradise, with striking selected succulents as accents. An extensive driveway of second hand bricks was installed to provide access to the horse stables, house and visitor parking, bordered on both sides by swathes of lush green Flax Lily, Mat Rush and Cardboard Palms, among random sandstone rocks to provide interest. All the new garden spaces were built with sandstone paving, steel edging and pebble inserts, making use of interesting lighting to highlight key areas and showcase the entire piece. Several new courtyards with entertainment and living areas were created to ensure the space was liveable for the whole family, and a prominent water feature was installed to give the garden a feeling of tranquillity. The end result is a beautiful, lush tropical escape that can be enjoyed by everyone – even the horses.