The clients’ top priority here was to transform a ‘clinker brick & tile’ into a sleek and chic new home. They also wanted to ‘strip the backyard jumble and create a gorgeous, enticing courtyard environment in a contemporary style’.

Sue and Colin’s brief was to create privacy from close, overlooking neighbours, provide flowers and fragrance, fruit and vegetables, a relaxing entertaining area, a spot for a cup of tea, incorporate a loved Indian door, a functional hidden service area, enduring ground surfaces and easy care.

The 140m2 garden is just a year old. An instant 3m high hedge provides privacy while flowers, fragrance, fruit and vegetables burst from raised timber planters and a collection of the now ubiquitous concrete drainage inspection cylinders. A sharply defined geometry of deck, pebbles and tiling provides the definition for places to pause and sit, or gather on the stunning arrangement of outdoor furniture. This faces a black screen smothered with star jasmine and featuring the Indian door. A flowering cherry hovers above and lavender, gardenias, roses and violets offer their joys below. The service area disappears behind.

Garden lighting transforms this lush, yet open and sunny space by day, into a sophisticated, intimate, entertainment space by night.