Centennial Park Garden Sanctuary

Carol and Doug approached us to create a flexible secondary dwelling to their Centennial Park home. The existing site suffers from a dramatically sloping rear yard, which is both physically and visually detached from the main dwelling. With reference to the garden suburb movement of Centennial Park our proposal uses stepped garden terraces that follows the natural rise in ground level of the site.

Through a series of comfortable steps, deep garden beds and seating, a terracing effect is created, allowing the existing principle dwelling to achieve a more integrated connection to the yard. It has also allowed the new studio to maintain an intimate upper garden terrace that is strategically screened by native planting. While both the upper and lower garden maintain a sense of privacy, the varying volumes plant heights of planting allows both dwellings to take full advantage of view sharing principles.

By drawing the colour scheme of the new dwelling from the native planting proposed, the new studio recedes into the background of the garden, reducing its visual impact from the existing dwelling.

“The bedroom is such a lovely room and works so well the way you have designed it. During COVID-19 lockdown, the granny flat really came into its own and has been great.

It is such a well designed space and we feel very fortunate to have had PWA transform our backyard. We are able to straddle the centuries with our 1912 original house and new future-proofed granny flat and garden. We’re really enjoying the garden and I’ve actually been enjoying mowing the lawn – weekend mindfulness and exercise.”   – from the Owner Carol