[ Areas We Serve ]

Landscape design in Wynnum and Manly.

Salt wind, deep red soils over basalt clay, and weatherboard character by Moreton Bay, where gardens are designed for the sea breeze or defeated by it.

Wynnum and Manly face straight onto Moreton Bay, and the bay runs the show. The south-easterly comes off the water salt-laden for days at a time, and the pandanus and figs along the foreshore are a plain lesson in what actually copes here. The soil surprises people: away from the beach itself it isn't sand at all, but a deep, reddish, slightly acidic loam sitting over basalt-derived clay, good growing ground that can still dry out, with heavier clay and higher water tables through the low-lying streets. This is genuinely coastal gardening, one train line from the CBD.

The reward is a lifestyle most suburbs can't touch: weatherboard cottages and Queenslanders a few streets from the water, the wading pool and the esplanade for the evening walk, Manly Harbour full of masts at the end of the street. Gardens here should match that register: relaxed, breezy, salt-proof, and made for living outside most of the year.

Designing for salt wind

Salt exposure sorts plants without mercy, and the sorting runs streets deep: frontline gardens near the esplanade take spray and constant wind, while two or three streets back the effect softens but never disappears. We design in lines of defence: casuarina, coastal banksia, pandanus and westringia taking the brunt, tougher mid-layers behind them, and the softer planting held in the protected pockets that structure creates.

The trick is to filter the wind, not wall it out. A solid barrier on the foreshore creates turbulence and robs you of the breeze that makes bayside living work; permeable screens and layered planting slow it down instead. Our coastal garden design approach is built around exactly this.

Agaves and layered dry-tolerant planting in gravel

Know your soil, honest materials

The soil here isn't what the location suggests. Away from the foreshore, the characteristic bayside ground is a deep, reddish, slightly acidic loam sitting over basalt-derived clay: genuinely productive soil that can still bake dry in exposed, rain-shadowed spots. Drop into the low-lying streets and it turns heavier, with reactive clay and a higher water table, and the lowest coastal ground can carry acid sulfate soils that are mapped by council and best left undisturbed, worth checking before any real excavation. Actual sand is confined to the beach itself, not the gardens behind it. A soil test on your block settles all of this, and from there we specify richer soil for the beds that need it and match planting to the real ground rather than a guess: tough, salt-tolerant coastal species on the exposed edges, silver and grey foliage that reads right against the bay light, and softer planting held where the soil and shelter can support it.

Materials follow the same jetty-town logic. Hardwood left to silver, crushed-gravel and shell-toned paths, fittings specified for salt air: relaxed, robust surfaces that suit a weatherboard home near the water far better than polished formality would.

Entertaining on the sea breeze

The bayside's best asset arrives most summer afternoons, so outdoor rooms are oriented to catch the north-easterly, with shade overhead and the cooler winds at your back. That's what bayside living asks for: a deck positioned for the breeze, an outdoor shower after the wading pool, a table that seats the Sunday crowd.

We plan those spaces with the same care as interiors (see our outdoor entertaining design work), because by the bay, the outdoor room genuinely is the main living room for eight months of the year.

Getting started

It begins with a Design Discovery Consultation: $350, on-site. We look at what the salt and wind are actually doing on your block, and you leave with a written design brief and a fee proposal. Concept designs typically run $2,500–$6,000, with builder-ready documentation from $5,000.

We design right along this coastline, and our Bayside and Redlands page covers the suburbs further south.

[ FAQ ]

Common questions

The frontline list is short and proven: pandanus, coastal banksia, casuarina, westringia, spinifex and their kin, which is much the same palette the foreshore itself uses. Behind that first line of defence the range opens up quickly; position in the garden matters as much as species.

It surprises people, because it isn't the beach sand the location suggests. The characteristic bayside soil is a deep, reddish, slightly acidic loam sitting over basalt-derived clay, which is good growing ground but can dry out. The low-lying streets run heavier, with reactive clay and higher water tables, and the lowest coastal ground can carry acid sulfate soils that council maps and that are best left undisturbed. True sand is really only along the foreshore. We recommend a soil test up front so we're designing for the real ground, then specify enrichment for the beds that need it and choose species that suit whatever's actually there. Wholesale soil replacement is a losing battle and rarely necessary; the soil is a condition you design with, not against.

Less, but it hasn't gone. Wind-borne salt carries well past the esplanade in a stiff south-easterly, so we still weight the exposed, bay-facing edges of the garden toward tough coastal species and keep the tender planting in sheltered pockets.

Plants in this guide
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