Eckersley Garden Architecture

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Eckersley Garden Architecture offers our clients a revitalised approach to creating a landscape. Merging experience and creativity, our passion is crafting a unique garden that invites you to enjoy your outdoor space. Iconic designer Rick Eckersley is joined by recent partners Scott Leung and Myles Broad to offer a wealth of knowledge in aesthetics and practical form.

Through our knowledge of design, sustainable gardening, horticulture and construction, E-GA takes the art of garden making to new levels. We work collaboratively to turn your brief into an individually tailored garden.

Our approach is to bring sustainable and considered ideas to life in your garden. We understand how space and facility work together to create lifestyle and amenity. We recognise the importance of horticulture and its role within a garden. Integrating all the elements to create a unique garden is our expertise. Eckersley Garden Architecture is driven by all threads of the design process - there is no cookie cutter formula.

No longer a 'fly by the seat of your pants' industry, garden making has matured and E-GA is at the forefront of that change. The garden industry is increasingly moving towards the concept of outdoor spaces becoming built forms. People's expectations of gardens have changed too - from a simple appreciation of greenery in the backyard, to an understanding of outdoor lifestyle and all that a well designed outdoor space can offer.

Eckersley Garden Architecture receives commissions Australia wide and internationally. Our client base is as varied as our garden designs, ranging from small residential, through commercial multi residential, to country retreats. We also work closely with leading Australian architects to ensure a consolidated approach to design.

For client testimonials, please view our new blog- http://eckersleygardenarchitecture.blogspot.com

Rick Eckersley
Creative Director

Myles Broad
Principal Designer

Scott Leung
Principal Designer

Sarah Henderson
Office & Marketing Manager

Projects

Backyard Holidays

This rear garden is a secluded, north facing private space, ideal for catching winter sun in the adjacent artist's studio and for dipping into the pool in the summer heat. French doors open out from the rear of the house onto a solid stone terrace, linking inside and out. Generous stairs then lead down to the main entertainment area of the garden comprising of pergolas, a swimming pool and a design studio.

The central pergola is veiled with a deciduous vine of Boston Ivy under which a timber and stainless steel furniture setting is placed. This space is suitable for outdoor entertaining in winter sun or summer shade, as well as the nice days and nights in between.

The soft landscape has seasonal longevity. Masses of scented white blooms profuse in spring, verdant foliage holds through summer, shifting to brilliant reds and oranges in the autumn, then as winter settles in, the bare lacework of branches make their own architectural statement.

Multi Residential Living

The Chevron development envelops a large central public open space compartmentalized into areas designated for recreation, entertainment and relaxation. A contemporary lap pool and gymnasium complex lies at the core of the space. The pool itself becomes a dramatic water feature with a cascade of water running over an elevated arc of stone to one edge.

Sinuous walkways lined with avenues of trees lead through tranquil gardens spaces surrounding the pool complex. Features include backdrops of sculptured stone walls, reflective ponds, bold sweeps of plantings and mood lighting for night time use.

Built forms throughout the garden have bold architectural impact. Hard surface mediums are strong and textural. Repeats of colour in the walls and floors gives unity to the space and acts as a foil to the disciplined use of green foliage through the garden.

Suburban Retreat

Laid out around a large inconspicuous period family home, this is a generous sized gracious garden of sensitivity and charm. All effort has been made to compliment foliage and flowers with finishes and facilities. This lush green garden is surprisingly drought tolerant but also backed up with a bore and holding tanks.

The compartmentalized design has a range of active and passive recreational areas to satisfy all moods and activities. Options include: swimming pool, in ground trampoline, herb and vegetable garden, hen house, undercover BBQ and dining area plus both sunny and shaded relaxation areas.

Soft landscape includes clipped green shards of hedge for screening, woodland plantings of seasonal foliage, contoured lawns, flows of mass ground covers, creepers to climb and drape and herb and vegies for the kitchen.

Toorak Residence

The site and orientation of this property had a strong influence on how the garden and the useable spaces were laid out. The house sits in the centre of a long and narrow, steeply sloping rectangular block. With access to the garden at both ends of the house, the garden is divided into two halves and visible through large north facing windows.

Large sliding glass doors of the kitchen and living spaces open to an outdoor dining area at the high end of the site. This undercover section provides t

he family with a large entertaining space and built in cooking facilities with plenty of storage.

A large flat quadrangle of hardy lawn is retained by a three meter masonry wall which overlooks the generous swimming pool. Access to the pool is positioned off a family activities room, with a secondary path through the lower garden to encourage "a walk in the garden".

Kids, family, friends and dogs use this outdoor space all year round, thus successfully fulfilling the client's brief of easy care and usability.

Going Green

Climate change is having a real impact on the way people are approaching garden making in Australia. Our traditional approach of copying northern European gardens is failing as our country faces protracted drought, flood and fire. There needs to be a change in attitude toward gardens if they are to be successful in the future.

This garden, a personal project of Eckersley Garden Architecture, is an experimental attempt to create a fully sustainable garden. The primary motivation behind this garden is to change public attitude to sustainable, drought tolerant, native gardens. There is a long standing prejudice against the use of native plants - probably born of the 1970's when many bad native garden were put in place. But horticulture has moved on since and there are many exciting, colourful, drought tolerant plants in the market place and they can be used in place of traditional exotic plants.

The swimming pool also follows sustainable design principles. It is a 'Natural Pool' laid out in a traditional rectangular design and built with traditional materials. What it does not have is any of the chemicals in the water that are traditionally used to keep water clean and healthy. Rather, it relies on a natural filtration system which runs the water through the roots of native water plants growing alongside the swimming area. The pool provides habitat wildlife and is like jumping into a crystal clear freshwater billabong.

On completion, this garden is proposed as a teaching tool to encourage lateral thinking about gardening in the driest inhabited continent on the Earth.

Up Country

Since its conception twenty years ago, this five acre garden north of Melbourne has recieved less and less rain. And so with climate change in mind, recent renovations by new owners of the property have been based around drought tolerant plant design.

The garden wraps around a centrally placed homestead and is made up of many compartments that are linked by a double entry diveway, access roads and gravelled pathways. Within these spaces are a tennis court, a swimming pool and a series of floating timber decks which connect the house with the gardens and main entertaining area to the north.

The soft landscape is of hardier exotic trees, shrubs and ground covers. They roll through the property in amoeboid shaped beds that encircle inner lawns and buildings. The property also gives many beautiful vistas - mainly internal garden views but also some beautiful panoramas overlooking the Northern hills of Melbourne.

This is a property owned by passionate gardeners who generously open it for public and private viewings throughout the year.

Family Retreat

Wrapping around a large Victorian era home, this romantically inspired garden is designed for family living. The garden has been laid out in series of separate spaces which cater for active recreation, entertainment and passive reflection. These garden rooms are linked with generous pathways and creeper draped arbors which draw users f

rom space to space with the enticing vistas they create.

The plant selection of this garden deliberately focuses on flora which has longevity through the seasons and a strong green backbone all year 'round. Roses bloom for six months of the year in a walled parterre courtyard that has the strength of patterned topiary to carry it through the winter months. Large informal hedges provide seasonal flowers and berries as well as a sense of privacy. In less formalized parts of the garden, woodlands of deciduous Maples emerge through sweeping lawns in a parkland style. The planting then drifts to a relaxed Australian mood with a combination of native and exotic plants that weave a gentle tapestry around the large reflective pond.

This is a multifunction garden that is growing with its family. From cubby house to tennis court, formal paved terraces and casual timber deck dining areas - there is a place here for everyone.

Contemporary Garden

Nestled amongst large native trees, the clean simple architecture of this 1960's cinderblock home provided strong bones from which to structure a new garden. The house is really a viewing platform with the garden at centre stage and as such, they had to marry together seamlessly. Large expanses of windows at the rear open out on to generous outdoor living spaces whilst garden views are revealed from carefully framed side windows.

The brief for this garden came from a young active family who love to entertain and didn't want to spend all of their spare time slaving in the garden. A new pool was also an important inclusion for the fast growing tribe of kids. The result is a contemporary garden which extends the strong lines of the architecture into the garden and then softens them with carefully sited plantings. Material choices are also sympathetic to the neutral tones of the house - muted greys of pebble seeded aggregate and weathered timber all work easily in the space.

Meadow Lands

This solid concrete bunker style home sits well up on the hill and commands an expansive view. Large balconies and terraces provide perfect outdoor extensions and offer ease of access and protection from the elements.

The design of the soft landscape is intentionally curved, soft and flowing against the strength of the architecture. Large swathes of fine, ephemeral grasses are fused with plants that have strong floral impact throughout the season. This creates a curvaceous patch work quilt of plants which is particularly effective when viewed from above. Paths meandering down the hill separate these plantings and re-enforce the gentle curved shapes of the landscape.

At the heart of the landscape, a striped deck of granite and timber connects to a large reflective pond. This dark water reflects the sky to ground level and ties together the severe architecture and informal vegetation. This union of styles creates a residence that immediately has a sense of familiarity and place.

Coastal Weekender

The brief here was low maintenance. A contemporary concrete weekend dwelling nestles into remnant native vegetation on the coastal sand dunes of the Mornington Peninsula. The foot print of the building is carefully designed to minimize site clearance and maximize the indigenous flora of the region.

Weed choked bushland was cleaned out to create an open, rejuvenated space. Scattered copses of Coastal Tea Tree once strangled by Ivy, now protrude unburdened through newly accessible graveled areas. These spaces for outdoor gatherings and car parking are surrounded and divided by newly shaped garden beds. Swathes of native grasses and low growing shrubs knit together with the established tree line.

Boundaries are covered with a curtain of native spinach which twines up and veils down on whatever frame it can find. The thick concrete beams of the house seems to float over the edge of a reflective pond to the north of the property and a swimming pool on the western side - a sharp contrast to the coastal woodland surround

s.

Working the angles

Architects McBride Charles Ryan have designed a cutting edge residence placed on a small allotment. Outdoor space and landscape was carefully considered as every square metre had to offer an amenity value to the clients. It was important to provide a design that did not compete with the striking architecture but still gave the sense of being in the garden space.

Street frontage planting sets a casual but vibrant tone to the property. Flowering grasses soften and spill over level changes, curtains of deep green creeper cascade over stone clad walls and the brilliant lilac of Jacaranda bloom splashes a hit of colour against the somber tone of the building.

Boundary walls and fences were draped with climbing plants to provide green backdrops to the texture pavements. Further layering was done by using espaliered plantings in front of the walls. The positioning and selection of trees was critical to allow ease of movement around the property and to avoid congestion at canopy height.

Interest at ground level was achieved in collaboration with the architects. Grey reconstituted stone pavers are flanked by vibrant, insitu pebble paving in high use areas. Large loose pebbles reflect foliage colours in lower traffic areas. The result is a harmonious but sometimes surprising outdoor space.

Living Out

This garden is made up of a series of intimate, walled courtyards. Strongly architectural garden elements are softened by naturalistic plantings which lend the garden a casual lived in feel. The front entrance features a rounded steel pergola which floats over a heavily textured and patterned pavement. Verdant plantings separate this entrance from a pergola covered parking area to one side and a walled courtyard to the other. Breaks within the planting provide access and also give a sense of depth and discovery to the garden by restricting the vistas.

The main courtyard is bound by the house on three sides and is connected to the garden by a lofty steel pergola. Deciduous creepers run along wires on the pergola to form a shady canopy during summer and bare their branches through winter to let the sun back through. Jacaranda trees work their way through the steel beams to add a profusion of purple flowers to the leafy canopy. At ground level the planting is a simple blend of flowering grasses and shrubs which bleed through areas of hard surface and divide the space to designated areas for recreation, relaxation and entertainment.

The focal point of the main courtyard is a walled reflective pond dotted with designer 'Balloon lights'. Mosaic pebble swirls installed by a local artist echo the shapes of these lights. In the centre of the courtyard, a round spa, lined with a the same pebble finish sits amongst flags of stone with planting that runs right up to the water's edge.

Elements

Focals

Focal points are like an exclamation mark in the designed landscape. They can be the deliberate placement of an object interest in the garden to catch the eye, or the shaping of a vista to frame a beautifully sculpted tree. They can be a useable facility, or an ornamental or artistic installation.

Whether it is an obvious placement or one to be discovered upon exploration of the garden will depend on the individual design of the garden. Only if a focal is of very good quality should it have an influence on way a garden is laid out.

A wide range of ornamentation is available varying in sizes, shapes and materials. But they needn't be manmade products off the shelf. A carefully trained topiary can give as much interest in the garden as a glazed urn. The selected object needs to work in harmony with the theme and style of a garden. It should be selected with the garden design in mind but should also reflect the personal style of the gardens owner.

Planting

The true reward of gardening comes from the growing of favorite plants in successful and achieving appealing compositions. For landscape designers, plant combinations are often the thread which links together architecture and hard landscape. The strength of a good planting does not always lie with the ability of a gardener. Good plant design needs more than just horticultural knowledge; it needs a sense of how plants work together in a garden - something which is often overlooked.

It is always best to work with plants that are proven in the environment and use them en masse to create a bold statement. The choice of plants available is so extensive that you need not conform to traditional selections. After all, why should every garden be represented with colourful collections of those tired old exotics - Camellias, Azaleas, Roses, Cinerarias and Daffodils? The most enticing gardens are those which are fittingly designed for their environment and use plants that will perform in all conditions.

Climate change is giving Australian gardeners pause for thought at present. Plants that were once proven performers are dying at alarming rates as climatic zones seem to shift. Plant

breeders are developing new ranges of native plants and gardeners are once again turning to them as proven performers through times of drought.

Hopefully we will see a shift in thinking about plant selection and design in Australian landscapes.

Pools

Australia has such a hot and dry climate that water plays a huge role in our recreational lifestyle. Demand for swimming pools in the designed landscape is increasing as more and more people seek the pleasures of water in their own properties. There are many different options available in layout, style and materials - mosaic tiles, glass bead renders, solar and gas heating, saltwater chlorination, freshwater filtration - to name but a few. Swimming pools can be large and dominant, or more distant destinations within the landscape, lap pools or plunge pools - the choices are endless.

Swimming pools are a pivotal and expensive part of any landscape but surprisingly few are designed in a way that best suits the site or offers the client greatest amenity. Often pools are designed and sited by pool builders with the landscape seen as ancillary. A swimming pool should be considered objectively as one component of a garden design and should blend aesthetically into the style of the garden and the surrounding architecture.

Furniture

The design of outdoor furniture has evolved in the last few years from being simple, functional pieces, to being the show pieces of the garden. No longer is choice restricted to civic-style picnic settings in either a painted or natural finish. Traditional sturdy timber benches and tables are making way for sculptural forms, woven polymer fabrics and delicate stainless steel frames.

Furniture is important to the mood of an outdoor space. A large quadrangle space can be softened by a visually lightweight circular table. Courtyards dressed in tones of muted grays and browns can be sharpened up with contemporary furniture pieces of stainless steel, polished stone and mesh.

The right choice of furniture gives strength and place to the design of that outdoor space. It can surprise or sooth but most importantly it should make the visitor feel as though they belong in that space.

It is a revelation to sit in a beautiful garden and be enveloped by a piece of beautiful garden furniture.

Texture

Texture for tactility in a garden is paramount. It is readily agreed that the senses of sight and smell are inherent in a beautiful garden. However, equally important within the space is the sense of touch. When seeing texture within the makeup of the garden, there is a desire to touch and feel the surface.

Texture is available in many variations. The combinations of these textures are at the discretion of the designer, thus the degree of combinations affects the subtleties of the parallel outcome.

An organic or living object can enhance the senses further once touched. The disturbed surface of a living object w

ill pervade a scent by releasing stored perfumes or by disturbing the surrounding air.

Most smooth surfaces reflect light; where as a non smooth surface absorbs the light, intensifying the colour of the objects. The play of shadows caused by the varying patterned surfaces also exaggerates the details and excites the eye.

A combination of varying texture in one space adds interest over the boredom of using predominately one smooth surface finish and touching the surface, adds a further dimension to the object. Texture in surfaces is actual and its use can have an impact on how the garden is perceived. And perception is a strong tool in garden design.

Mood

Mood in a garden is not something tangible. It's an evocation of the senses as you walk into a space and it is something that should grow on you as you get to know the space better. Mood goes beyond the 'wow' factor of first impressions and extends to how people feel when they are in a garden.

The mood of a space is something that can and should be planned for. A moody garden should beckon the user and envelop them in sensory anticipation. It should draw them further in to discover more. But most importantly, a garden with mood should leave people at ease with the space.

Whether it be by creating dappled sun light through canopies of foliage in a softer garden, or perhaps the contrast of shadow against the wall of a sharp contemporary courtyard. Gardens which have a desirable atmosphere will leave people with a sense of place that they will return to time and time again.