ROZELLE 2039
A front garden made to increase kerb appeal.
by Jasper Green
Status: Completed early 2026.
Project facts
- Location: Rozelle, Inner West
- Garden: front garden of about 20 m² at a semi-detached inter-war bungalow on a busy road
- Services: concept, working plans and planting design
- Built by: the homeowners
- Year: 2025–2026
The brief
The owners wanted a garden with the romance of an old European cottage garden, using plants that cope with Sydney’s climate. It also had to provide habitat for birds and insects, need little water and only occasional work, and be built on a modest budget by the owners themselves.
What shaped it
- Traffic noise: the garden faces a busy road, so it was never going to be a place to sit for long. Most of the time it is seen from the footpath, the front door and the house.
- An already finished house: the bungalow had been renovated and painted, so the garden needed to suit it rather than compete with it.
- What was already there: established hedges, the shade of an existing deciduous tree, and a tired boundary fence that filled the background.
Key decisions
1. A formal layout to match the house. Clipped structure and a simple, symmetrical layout suit the period of the bungalow and read clearly from the street, which is how the garden is mostly seen. Cottage planting softens it without hiding the order underneath. The trade-off: the hedges need clipping a few times a year to hold their shape.
2. Keep the existing hedges. They already suited a formal layout and gave the garden structure and maturity, so keeping them had impact from the first day while saving on plants and labour. The shade of the existing tree narrowed the planting choices beneath it to plants that cope with summer shade and winter sun. The trade-off: the layout follows the lines of the old hedges rather than starting from a blank site.
3. Turn the fence into a backdrop. Instead of replacing the fence, we covered it with a fast-growing evergreen climber. The dark foliage makes the boundary recede, so the garden feels larger, and gives the period character the house needed. The trade-off: the climber needs trimming to keep it on the fence and off the garden.
Salvaged stone and weathered concrete pavers, with pea gravel underfoot, kept costs down and made a new garden look as if it had always been there. Wrought iron furniture completed the aesthetic.
Along the side path, overgrown hedging was replaced with narrower plants, letting light into the house and making room for a layered strip of natives, roses and salvias for bees and birds.
Result
Within a year of the main planting, the garden looks established: the hedges frame the house, the climber has closed over the fence, and the planting flowers through the warmer months.
The garden now feels like it is part of the house. The uneven pavers have been re-used as edging and the gravel replacing them gives a satisfying crunch underfoot. The plants covered the ugly fence really quickly. The garden is beautiful and visitors comment that it feels like it has been here for 100 years. We are really happy.
Michael (Homeowner)
Gallery
All images ©2026 Jasper Green Designs.
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