Backyard Landscaping in Melbourne

Backyard landscaping in Melbourne covers everything from neglected yards to spaces that have been built in stages. Either nothing has been touched since the house was built, or somebody had a go at it in stages and now there’s a deck that doesn’t quite meet the paving, a patch of lawn that never grows, and a corner nobody uses.

We’ve spent fifteen years and more than 2,000 projects sorting out both. Brisk Landscaping handles the design and the construction with the same crew, and we own the machinery that goes in first, so there’s no waiting on a subcontractor before your yard can even be cleared.

A backyard is rarely one job. It’s usually four or five that have to happen in the right order, which is the part people underestimate when they start pricing landscaping for backyard in Melbourne piece by piece. Ours typically covers:

• Excavation, levelling and retaining walls, because a fair few Melbourne blocks need half a metre taken out of them before anything else can start
• Decking, verandahs, pergolas and Stratco structures
• Paving, natural stone paving, mosaic tiling and exposed aggregate coatings
• Synthetic turf, which survives a summer without mowing, watering or the guilt that comes with both
• Water features, irrigation and lighting
• Shade sails, feature walls and automatic gates

Drainage is the one nobody asks about, and everybody regrets. We check it during site analysis, before a single paver goes down.

Small yards are harder than big ones. There’s nowhere to hide a mistake, and every square metre has to do a job.

The instinct is usually to cram in more. We’d say just the opposite. In Melbourne small backyard landscaping, the best designs involve having one element as the focal point of the garden and then surrounding it with other components. This could be a smaller deck, a single well-placed tree or water feature on a feature wall that pulls the eye up rather than across.

Some of the most common ways to make space available: pave to the edge instead of leaving a useless strip of sod, seating built into the wall instead of furniture, vertical landscaping on walls, and artificial grass in those areas that never received the right amount of sunshine.

If there’s a pool going in, or one already there, it changes everything around it. A pool is the centrepiece of most backyards, so the landscaping has to be planned with it rather than added afterwards.

Two practical things worth knowing early. Pools want sunlight and no heavily overhanging trees, which affects where the rest of your planting can go. In Victoria, pool fencing is required to meet the Australian Standard AS 1926, which means 1.2 metres high with a 900mm non-climbable zone around it.

Nothing tall can be placed near the fence line in that zone, nor can there be a retaining wall or built-in seating. Designing the yard first and discovering that later is an expensive way to learn it.

Very few landscapers publish numbers, which is why homeowners end up with quotes they can’t compare. Roughly, here’s where the cost to landscape a backyard sits:

• A full design and construction job usually runs $5,000 to $10,000, then climbs with the size of the block and the materials you specify
• Ongoing garden and lawn maintenance starts around $100 a month.
• Turf laying or tree work is often finished inside three days.
• A large deck or verandah takes several weeks.
• A staged backyard rebuild involving excavation, retaining walls and structures can run to three months.

Spring is the best time to start most backyard landscaping in Melbourne, summer suits finishing the larger builds, and autumn is when trees go in happiest. We work through the year regardless and plan around your timing.

You get a free measure and quote, by appointment, before committing to anything. From there it’s a site consultation, then site analysis covering measurements, soil, building codes, and sun, shade and wind patterns. We work out which existing plants stay, go or get relocated, then bring you concept sketches to react to. Once the preliminary plan is signed off, we build.

We’re licensed and insured, and the certificates are yours to see whenever you ask.

Call 1300 027 475 or email info@brisklandscaping.com.au to get someone out to look at the space. We service starting in Point Cook and Werribee, all the way through to Camberwell, Templestowe, Frankston and Melton.

Whether you need backyard landscaping in Melbourne or simply want to improve your outdoor space, bring your worst photos. We’ve seen worse.