Judy and Alan’s Front Garden Makeover

People walking past Judy and Alan’s front garden have started slowing down. Some stop altogether. Friends keep telling them how good it looks, and Judy’s had people “stopping for a look and gawking” over the fence. But it didn’t always look like this.

Starting from scratch

When Judy and Alan bought the house two and a half years ago, nothing had been done to the front garden since the ’70s. It was an old English cottage garden that had run wild.

The flowers and trees were overgrown and crowded, and there wasn’t much worth saving.

“We were always going to update it, but we had competing priorities,” Judy says. “The garden, despite not looking great, was towards the bottom of the list.”

Once the inside was renovated and the outside of the house fixed up, the garden moved up the list. It all came to a head when they found the trees in the front garden had wrecked the terracotta stormwater pipe, and it had to be replaced. So whatever was left came out, the pipe was fixed and everything else was cleared. “We had a blank canvas,” she says.

Ideas from the daily dog walk

Judy walks their dog Ben every day, and those walks turned into her research. She’d look at other people’s gardens and take little notes on what she liked.

She liked the stones and grasses, but agapanthus were a no. She didn’t want deciduous trees either, but she did want proper garden beds with some colour and natives.

Judy started putting some drawings together, but it was Steve Patterson from Nextgen Landscaping who helped turn them into a plan. She loved the idea of corten steel and a pebble path up to the house.

Steve took the time to work through it all with Judy and Alan, making sure their ideas would work and the details were just right. He curved the beds to follow the line of the driveway. In her words, he “interpreted it in a way that looked better than I thought was possible.”

“Steve’s been a big part of building and landscaping our front garden and driveway,” Judy says. “We’re really pleased with the quality of work he and his team consistently deliver.”

Out to the nursery

Judy had bought plants elsewhere a few times, mostly for pots and the odd specific thing. They cost more, and when she asked for advice the answers were often lacklustre.

“Sometimes I’d go in with an idea after Googling things,” she says. “But when I asked, they didn’t give me ideas, or the depth of information I was looking for, to know if what I was thinking would actually work.”

Judy had heard about Ballarat Advanced Tree Nursery from a friend, so she did what we all do and Googled us. She spent a while on our website exploring what we had, then when it was time to get serious about putting plants in the ground, she booked a nursery appointment. “It’s not far and it’s not hard to find,” she says. “And then when you get there, it’s like, ‘Oh my God,’ when you see the enormity of it.”

“We got met at the car and shown around.” There was no waiting about, and she never felt like an afterthought. Judy doesn’t call herself a gardener, so the questions made a big difference. The team asked plenty of them to work out what she needed.

Ben, their cocker spaniel, came along too. He was treated like absolute royalty, which went down well.

Walking the rows

Once the team had a feel for what Judy and Alan were after, they all headed out into the rows. Judy got to see the trees, shrubs and grasses in person. They talked through which trees and plants might work, and how each one would sit in the garden. “We never felt pressured,” Judy says. “But every time something was suggested, it was almost exactly what we wanted.”

She’d brought along a photo of a tree from one of her walks, with no idea what it was. It turned out to be a bay tree, and the team took her to see one. From there they talked through the style of hedge she was after, how many plants she’d need and which grasses would suit the space, then looked at which grass colours would work best.

“She very cleverly dragged out of my brain what I was looking for and gave me exactly that.”

Judy knew she wanted feature trees that wouldn’t get too big, but she hadn’t settled on what. She went home with two standard weeping Grevillea ‘Bronze Rambler’. “

I never thought I would have got something as beautiful like that,” she says. “To have the two of them like that is just phenomenal. One is much taller and sits right in the middle, just as I had envisioned. The other is much smaller and feels like it was made for the spot I popped it in, close to the front door.”

How the front garden is growing now

The plan stuck pretty much as drawn, and everything has settled in. The bay trees took straight away and they’re flush with new growth. “They look so good,” Judy says. “I can’t decide what I’m most pleased with, because the two weeping grevilleas have settled in really well too. They just fit the space.”

Judy and Alan used the planting and care guide on our website to give everything the best start. “It was super helpful when it came to getting the right information on how to stake our new feature trees,” she says.

There’s still more to come. They’ve put in a pre-order for kangaroo paws, and they’ll be back for more trees for the pots along the fence and a groundcover by the front door. “We’ll obviously be back to finish the job off,” Judy says. “I like that the plants are grown locally. They’ve hit the ground running, which makes a real difference.”

What she’d tell a friend

“I would absolutely recommend them. I’d absolutely recommend that they look at the website and make an appointment. It’s different from most other garden centres you’ll go to, because they’re not trying to sell you pretty pots and hanging baskets, they’re trying to sell you plants that work.”

Got a blank canvas of your own, or a photo of a tree you can’t name? Maybe you’ve got the ideas but need some advice on how it all comes together. Book a nursery appointment and come and have a chat.