Landscape design and construction in Avalon Beach.

Why Avalon gardens live or die on the planting list

Avalon sits in the salt line. The southerly carries it straight off the beach and over the dune streets, and it finds the soft exotics first: the camellias, the buxus, the nursery bestsellers that looked perfect in the pot. By the second summer they are crisped on the seaward side and the owner is convinced nothing grows here. Plenty grows here. It just has to be the right list, planted in the right zone.

So Avalon jobs start with the wind, not the want list. We map the exposure across the block, then armour the front line with the toughest coastal natives, westringia, coastal rosemary, banksia, lomandra, and tuck the softer, prettier layers behind them where the salt has already been knocked down. Done properly, the front rank becomes a living windbreak that shelters everything else, and the garden reads as lush rather than braced.

The other Avalon constant is sand over a sandstone shelf. Dig half a metre in most backyards here and you hit rock, which changes everything: how deep a footing can go, where a wall can sit, and how fast water moves through (fast, then nowhere once it hits the shelf). We design with the rock instead of pretending it is not there, cutting sandstone steps into the slope and building planting pockets in the shelves rather than fighting them.

• Wind-zoned planting: armoured natives on the exposure line, softer layers behind
• Sand-over-sandstone design: cut steps and pockets, not blind excavation
• The Avalon palette done right, sandstone, spotted gum and layered natives, not braced-looking scrub