Front Garden Makeover -

We had been contemplating our front garden makeover for a really long time. It was really hard to get our head around the awkward space. I wanted the front garden to be low maintenance but to also add a real wow to the entrance. In the process of working through the plans we realised that our neighbours tree had been responsible for a large crack in our front path. We needed to deal with this prior to spending money on the new garden.

Unfortunately at this time our neighbour lost a family member who lived with her and we didn’t think it appropriate to add to her stress. We chose to carry on with other projects and left it for approximately 10 months before approaching her. It did not go well – she refused to remove it even though we tried to soften the blow by paying for it!!! As she is older we decided to let it sit with her for a while as we completed our other projects. Thankfully she did eventually come around and had the tree removed and we were able to move on with our front garden makeover.

Planning a front garden makeover

We had a lot of issues to deal with in the front garden. The worst being the triangle shaped area close to the house. We had also considered replacing the driveway but it was going to cost $15,000. As we still had a lot of other projects to do we decided to clean and seal it after we finish the renovation.

We did decide to get rid of the front path. I wanted to have a more formal look and wanted things squared off not rounded as the path was. We removed all the jasmine that was on the fence and this was not a job for the faint hearted. The sap is ridiculous and stains everything. Tony attacked it with a full safety suit on 😂. The area under the jasmine has a reasonable slope on it that had to be dealt with too. We also had to remove the plant on the left hand side of the house.

After a lot of discussion and research we decided to put in a retaining wall to deal with the slope. Have the area paved and use our pedestal as a major feature in the centre of the path. We chose grey pavers for the path with a large square area of cream pavers where the pedestal would stand. It was also decided that we would have this job done by a professional landscaper as we had limited time to tackle it. Being the front entry we didn’t want work to be going on for weeks while we completed it on weekends. It was finished in four days which was brilliant. We were then able to take our time with the planting.

Plants we used

Feature tree – Magnolia Teddy Bear
Standard Gardenia True Love
Gardenia Florida
Murraya min a min. Purchased from Australian Plants Online.
Mini white Agapanthus. Purchased from Australian Plants Online.
Port Wine Magnolia in the retaining wall
White Iceberg Standard Rose

We decided to use a black mulch and were really happy with the way it looks.

Lighting completes our front garden makeover

We really wanted to incorporate some lighting in the front garden. First we wanted to highlight the Magnolia tree. Secondly we wanted lights in the retaining wall.

We chose to use Holman Lighting from Bunnings as they had some really good value kits. We went with two different size lights. The Spotlight kit was great and we purchased two. Having the lights on a timer was something we really wanted. We purchased this bluetooth transformer and it’s brilliant. We also had to purchase various additional cables to finish the job as we had to plug them in on the other side of the fence. These lights were so easy to install I was able to do it on my own without any dramas at all.