There is a long-running argument in Australian landscape design about whether residential gardens should be planted exclusively in natives. The argument tends to be loudest among people who don't make many gardens.
On Planting
Our own working position, after fifteen years of designing in Sydney, is that the question is the wrong shape. The right palette for a garden is the one that suits the site, the climate, the client and the maintenance regime — and most Sydney sites are best served by a deliberate mix.
“We don't design all-native gardens, and we don't design all-exotic ones either. A practical note on how we mix the two in residential Sydney work.”
We tend to use natives — particularly the coastal banksias, westringias, lomandras and themedas — as the structural backbone of a garden, because they ask the least of the site and weather the worst of the climate. We then layer in exotics for moments of seasonal interest the natives cannot deliver: a magnolia for a single spring week, a hellebore for midwinter, a row of pleached hornbeams for architectural rhythm.
The ratio shifts by site. A clifftop garden in Avalon might be 90% native by mass; a heritage walled garden in Woollahra might be 20%. What stays constant is the principle: the palette serves the garden, not an argument.
