About 3 minutes from our Broadmeadow yard
Your Hamilton garden is probably small, flat and close to a hundred years old. Fernline Landscapes builds a path, front garden or courtyard that suits the cottage, from a yard three minutes away in Broadmeadow.
NSW contractor licence, structural landscaping: Lic. 000000C (demo)
In Hamilton your garden is usually the front yard, and the whole street sees it. It should look like it belongs to your house.
Most of Hamilton was built between the 1880s and the 1930s, on narrow blocks close to Beaumont Street and the railway. That leaves a particular kind of garden: a short front yard behind a low fence, a side path, and a backyard that's often been half paved over the years. The City of Newcastle's DCP puts two heritage conservation areas inside Hamilton, the Hamilton Business Centre around Beaumont Street and the Hamilton Residential Precinct on land the Australian Agricultural Company released from the 1880s, and the Hamilton South 'Garden Suburb' sits next door in Hamilton South and Hamilton East, around Parkway Avenue. In all three, the street-facing garden matters to the council as well as to the owner.
If you live in Hamilton, your house was probably built for someone who walked to work at the railway, the steelworks or the shops on Beaumont Street. The gardens were small and practical, and the best of them still are. So your front garden starts with your house: its age, its material, the line of the verandah. A Federation cottage wants a path straight to the steps and a hedge that frames it. An interwar brick bungalow can take something a little looser. Neither needs a garden that looks like it came from a display village.
Before anything comes out of your yard, we look hard at what's already there. A lot of Hamilton front yards still have their original brick or sandstone edging, buried under decades of grass. If yours is sound, we lift it, relay it on a proper base and build your new garden around it.
Hamilton sits low and flat, and that shapes almost every backyard here. Your sandy soil soaks up a shower quickly, but a heavy summer storm brings more water than the ground can take, and on a flat block it has nowhere to go. If your backyard was paved years ago with no fall, the water runs straight back towards the house.
Before a single paver goes down, your levels are set with a laser so every surface falls away from the house, at least one in a hundred. Then a strip drain where the paving meets the house, ag pipe under any lawn, and all of it connected to your stormwater. It's the least exciting part of the job and the one you'll be most grateful for.
If your street is narrow, with cars parked on both sides and little room for a truck, you won't be blocked in for days. We plan deliveries for early mornings, use smaller machines that fit down a side path, and keep the footpath clear. Being three minutes away in Broadmeadow helps too: if something needs collecting mid-job, it's a short trip, not a lost morning at your place.
They kept the old brick edging along the path and matched the new section to it. You can't see the join.
Helen, Hamilton · Sample review
A straight or gently curved path in brick or sandstone, a low hedge to the street and planting that suits the age of the house, not a new estate.
Garden design in HamiltonSmall, often half-paved backyards turned into one usable room: new paving with a proper fall, a drain, raised beds and a screen from the neighbours.
Paving in HamiltonLifting and relaying original brick or sandstone that's sunk or cracked, and matching new sections so the join disappears.
Paving in HamiltonIt might be. The City of Newcastle's DCP has two inside Hamilton, the Hamilton Business Centre around Beaumont Street and the Hamilton Residential Precinct, and a third, the Hamilton South 'Garden Suburb' around Parkway Avenue, just over the suburb's edge. The LEP heritage maps show the exact boundaries, and Fernline checks your address before drawing anything, so the design suits the rules from the start.
Planting and most garden work don't need approval. Changing a front fence or the look of the front garden from the street can need approval in a heritage conservation area, and a retaining wall there can only be exempt development if it's in the back yard. If your house is in one, we tell you what needs approval and what doesn't, and help with the application if it does.
Usually, yes. Hamilton's yards are flat, so water sits where it lands. We regrade the ground so it falls away from the house, add a strip drain along paving or an ag pipe under the lawn, and run it to your stormwater. We check the fall with a laser level, not by eye.
Most of the time. Old Newcastle bricks turn up at reclaimers, and where we can't find a match we choose a recycled brick that's close and lay it in the same pattern. On several Hamilton jobs we've relaid the original bricks on a new base and only added new ones at the ends.
Plants that stay in scale with a cottage: a clipped hedge of westringia or lillypilly to the street, low grasses like lomandra under the windows, and one small tree if there's room. In the sandy soil here, we add compost to the beds and mulch them well.
A typical front garden with a new path, edging, planting and mulch takes three to five days on site. A courtyard with new paving and drainage is usually one to two weeks.
A few photos and a rough idea is enough. We'll ring to book a free site visit, then send a fixed quote with a drawing.