When designing a garden, I really believe it comes down to balance.
A balance of hard surfaces, soft surfaces, you need to understand the natural environment,
what the climatic conditions are there, and then also the plant palette.
I'm Anthony Wyer, Landscape Designer and Creative Director of Wyer & Co,
this is my home, I am both Client and Landscape Designer.
My home is in Watson's Bay, Eastern suburbs of Sydney, a stone's throw from the harbour,
it has a beautiful community feel and a great outdoor area.
The home is situated on a corner block, nice and high, as you walk in there's a beautiful mature
Olive that just overhangs the entrance, so as you come in you get this beautiful feeling, you know,
shadows are casting, you come up the front stairs to the front door and you enter the home.
As you enter the home there's a beautiful staircase that goes upstairs to the more sort of private areas.
Halfway up the staircase there's a landing and a large wall where we put a beautiful
piece of art that provides colour and interest to the entrance of the home.
Off to the left we have the casual living areas that leads onto the rear garden,
and to the right, it's a more sort of chill out and formal zones where you can sort of get away
and you know have some quiet time whether you want to have a chat or you know read
a book or what have you, there's a formal lounge there and a playroom for the kids.
One of the major features of this property was the existing boulder which is in the rear garden,
a lot of this landscape design started on the back of this boulder,
it's quite an impressive natural element, and it was the keystone to developing the whole design.
Some of the key features that we have here, in the rear garden we have a beautiful fireplace,
we have a outdoor room which we describe as The Grotto,
nice barbecue area, covered space for lounging and dining, swimming pool,
and we have a beautiful planting palette that's consistent throughout the block.
In regards to the interiors of the home, I've had some help from friends that I've worked
with on a number of projects over the years, Marco Meneguzzi and Tamsin Johnson. Marco helped
us initially when we first moved into the house with the kitchen and the bathrooms,
he did an amazing job.
You know five years on, the house was a little bit beaten up from the children and needed a refresh,
we really liked how Tamsin brings in colour and different objects and gives
a bit of authenticity to the home, so we reached out to her and she helped us with
that which we really love. In regards to the orientation of the house, it was originally
designed by David Phillips who was quite a prominent architect in the Eastern suburbs,
and he did a really good job with the orientation, depending on the weather and the time of the year
you can escape. If it's too hot or too windy, a Nor'easter is coming through on the front,
you can escape to the back and the same goes for Winter, it's a little bit cooler out the back you
go out the front and you get that nice Northern Sun. All year round you're able to use the outdoor
spaces in different ways depending on what the weather's doing. The rear living areas face South,
but when we designed the garden we put a huge white wall along the rear boundary,
painting it white and having a white stone, when the Northern light hits it, it bounces
back inside the house which creates an abundance of soft light. The plant palette on this job was
of the utmost importance. Being a corner block, it has its advantages but also you're quite exposed,
placing mature trees in certain areas to create privacy and scale, combining them with hedging and
under planting, bringing in the right plants at the right scale to provide softness to the home
but also you know scale and also the right vibe was really important, understanding the climatic
condition of the Sun, the winds, the salt, that's around you is really important to make sure that
it all survived and what that added to the balance of the whole garden, it was really important.
We've gone for a little bit of a Mediterranean vibe, which has a bit of a thread throughout, but
it's coupled with natives as well so it's really important that I had a quite a right balance
throughout. When it comes to architecture and hard elements, it's almost like a jigsaw puzzle
that's missing a few pieces, once the plants go in they complete the whole picture of the project.