Designer: Blue Design Solutions Construction: Semken Landscape Austral Bricks products: • Sandstone Series - Flinders • Elements Series - Blue Onyx, Graphite, Manganese, Zinc • Melbourne Series - Hawthorn (halved, used as pavers), Newport • Riviera Series large format clay pavers - Andorra 400   NOVEMBER 2005

Behind the gently curved off-white brick wall framing the entrance to the ‘Urban Elements’ showgarden at this year’s Melbourne International Flower and Garden Show is a practical demonstration of the creative use of a limited space.

The garden was designed by Brent Reid and Amanda Greer of Blue Design Solutions, a young company incubated by award-winning landscape designer Jim Fogarty. “We were aiming at the inner urban market,” Brent explains. “We wanted to design a modern garden that makes the best use of a small courtyard.”

Slim brick pillars frame the entrance and support a timber pergola which provides dappled shade to the Riviera clay pavers. Their large format and gentle colouration is ideal for opening up smaller areas.

The paver pattern tapers as it moves through the garden to the main feature, a water wall. But this is no ordinary wall. The glint behind the water cascading down the three stack-bonded and recessed columns comes from the ‘Zinc’ semi-glazed bricks from Austral Bricks Elements Series. Water is pumped through an open stretcher joint at the top of each column.

“We didn’t want the water feature to have a big wow factor,” says Brent. “We wanted something very subtle, that was just there in the background.”

The internal brick walls frame the garden, creating semi-secluded spots amid the grey-green colour palette of the plantings. Timber, in the form of the pergola, benches, a daybed and wall feature, softens the hardscape. The diversity of foliage shapes and textures add a further dimension and balance to this striking garden.