Landscape design and construction in Bayview.

Why Bayview is a retaining and drainage job before it is a garden

Bayview blocks fall away to Pittwater on serious slopes, and most of them back onto bushland. That combination sets the whole job. Before anyone talks about planting, the real questions are how the hill is held and where the water goes, because on an escarpment block those are the same question, and getting either wrong is the most expensive mistake in landscaping.

Half the leaning walls in Bayview are leaning because someone built a sleeper wall to hold two metres of slope with no drainage behind it. Soil doubles in weight when it is saturated, and a wall built to hold dry soil fails the first wet winter. We engineer anything over 600mm, certify it, and run agricultural drainage behind every wall so the water leaves before it can push. Terracing the slope into usable, planted levels is the difference between a block you look at and a block you live on.

Then there is the bush. A block that meets bushland sits in a bushfire-prone zone, which means a BAL rating that shapes the timber on the deck, the materials near the house, and the planting in the defendable space. We assess the BAL, choose structures and species that comply, and handle the tree rules: the escarpment canopy is protected, so removing or even heavily pruning a tree usually needs a council permit, and we apply for it rather than risk the fine.

• Engineered, certified terracing with real drainage behind every wall
• Bushfire (BAL) aware design: compliant timbers, materials and defendable-space planting
• Tree permits and bushland-interface rules handled, not gambled on