Building Our House – Backyard Inspiration

” My garden is my most beautiful masterpiece “
Claude Monet

About our Backyard…

So lets start off with the facts; we have a very small backyard space with long side access’ all the way around, we want to make a big impact with a small space, and we want to have an easily maintainable backyard for us. So with these things in mind, we have planned out some rough ideas for what we want in our space out the back. Keep in mind, we can see the side access’ from all the bedrooms and the living room and dining room so we still want these spaces pleasing to look at, and the backyard can be seen through our back sliding doors from the open-plan living area.

What We Want

Luckily, we both love the tropical look backyard, however being in Western Australia, we have more of a dry climate so choosing tropical plants that will thrive in our climate will be the fun part.

We love the look of plants such as;

Strelitzia Nicolai (Giant Bird of Paradise)
Kangaroo Paw
Howea Forsteriana (Kentia Palm)
Banana Tree
Weeping Fig
Agave Attenuata
Philodendron
Aeonium Green
Bamboo
Dracaena Trifasciata (Mother In Law’s Tongue)

I absolutely love the look of a vibrant green garden, with all different heights, levels, tones and textures. It really feels effortless to me, and brings me back to being in a rainforest, or on a holiday.

Our Must Haves

We want real grass because we plan to have a dog sometime soon and even though fake lawn would be 1000x easier, we both can’t stand how bad fake lawn smells with dog wee reeking from it.
We want some sort of feature on the fence along our side access that can be seen through our floor to wall windows in our living and dining room. So we are thinking some mix of Birds of Paradise, Bamboo, Kangaroo Paws to bring some height to the fence.
We want to eventually deck our patio area to bring those warmer wood tones to match perfectly with the tropical greenery.
We want to create height in our back corner of the garden with a retaining wall full of plants behind and then attach some sort of bench seating to it so there is some space to enjoy the sun.
We want the space to be something we can look after easily because we have busy lives.
We want our other side access to be as weed free as possible and either just be paved, or pebbles or gravel with stepping stones.