About 14 minutes from our Broadmeadow yard
If your Glendale yard has been added to for decades, you're in good company. Fernline Landscapes clears out what's tired, keeps what's worth keeping and rebuilds the rest, about 14 minutes from our Broadmeadow yard.
NSW contractor licence, structural landscaping: Lic. 000000C (demo)
A Glendale backyard usually has good bones under the old concrete. The job is finding them and building from there.
Glendale sits at the northern tip of Lake Macquarie city, west of Newcastle, with its shops and services strung along Lake Road and Main Road and the big Glendale shopping centre just off Lake Road. The Cardiff industrial estate is next door across the railway line, and Hunter TAFE has a major campus here. Away from the main roads, the streets are established, and many of the houses are older ones on blocks that are generous by today's standards, with backyards that several owners have added to.
A lot of Glendale backyards have been worked on by three or four owners. There's a slab where a carport used to be, a shed nobody opens, a strip of pavers from the 1980s and a garden bed that's mostly weeds. Underneath all of that, the block itself is often a good size and fairly settled. The work is mostly clearing away years of small decisions.
So the first visit is about sorting what stays from what goes. A healthy old tree, a sound brick edge or a level patch of lawn can stay and save you money. Cracked concrete, rotten sleepers and sheds that leak go in the skip, and the ground under them gets checked, because compacted soil under an old slab needs work before it will grow anything.
Glendale's shops and services run along Lake Road and Main Road, with the big shopping centre and the TAFE campus nearby. If your house is on or near one of those roads, the front garden has a different job to a quiet street: it needs to give you some privacy and block the glare of passing cars. We use layered planting, a dense hedge with lower plants in front, and where you need it, a solid screen or fence behind. Planting on its own does little for traffic noise, so where noise is the problem, the screen does that job.
Behind the house, the job is often the opposite: opening the yard back up. Older blocks collect tall shrubs and overgrown hedges that block the winter sun. Thinning them out and lifting the canopy of a big tree can give you a sunny lawn again without losing your privacy.
Big established blocks are expensive to redo all at once, and you don't have to. We draw the whole yard as one plan, then build it in stages. The drainage and levels go in first, because they're the hard part to add later, then the area you'll use most, usually the space straight off the back door. The rest follows when you're ready, and because it was planned together, it all fits when it's done.
They broke up the old carport slab and took out the fibro shed after it was tested. Where the concrete was, there's now a veggie garden.
Julie, Glendale · Sample review
Breaking up cracked concrete, taking out old garden sheds and rubbish, and getting your backyard back to bare ground ready for a proper plan.
Hedges, screens and layered planting for houses near Lake Road and Main Road, so the front garden feels like yours and not part of the traffic.
Garden design in GlendaleOne plan for the whole block, built a section at a time: drainage and levels first, then the area you use most, then the rest as your budget allows.
Garden design in GlendaleYes, and it's one of the most common Glendale jobs. We break up the slab, take the concrete away for recycling, remove the shed, and then check the ground underneath. If the shed or an old fence is fibro, it gets tested for asbestos first and, if it comes back positive, a specialist takes it out before we start. Under the slab, the soil is often compacted and needs new soil before anything will grow in it.
Dense planting blocks headlights and the view of the road well. It does much less for noise than people hope, so if noise is the main problem, a solid fence or wall behind the planting does more. We'll tell you which one your front yard needs.
No. We draw one plan for the whole yard so each stage fits the next, then build it in parts. Drainage and levels go first because they're hardest to add later, then the area you'll use most, then the rest when you're ready.
Usually, yes. We keep heavy machines and new paving away from the root zone, avoid piling soil against the trunk, and plant under the canopy with shade-tolerant plants. If a tree looks unsafe, we'll say so and point you to an arborist.
The front yard and the first view of the backyard. Tidy edges, fresh mulch, a clean path to the door and one usable outdoor area do more for a sale than a big new garden. We can quote a short list and finish it in a week or two.
Usually not for a patio pergola. Glendale appears on Subsidence Advisory NSW's Lake Macquarie district map, and its exempt list covers pergolas up to 50 square metres on every property, so a typical one doesn't need its approval. A bigger pergola, or one built as part of a larger extension, gets checked against your address before Fernline quotes. Council's own size and setback rules still apply.
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.