Australian House & Garden

Our garden design in Melbourne’s Middle Park was recently featured in the September issue of Australian House & Garden.

While the lush courtyard in Melbourne’s provides a place of peace and repose for its owners, it never puts it’s own feet up. The same could be said of the entire project by Andy Murray Landscsape Design. In an unusual brief, he had to craft six separate, but equally inviting outdoor spaces on the one property.
In 2025, the couple bought a two-storey brick warehouse for a spacious new home. Three years later a single-storey two-bedroom semi over the back fence landed on the market. They couldn’t resist joining them up. BG Architecture remodeled the warehouse into the main residence on three levels and converted the semi into an office and a luxurious guest suite.


The garden brief centered on a courtyard connecting the two properties, which had to serve as a passageway as well as a shady retreat. But Andy also had to design a roof garden, a main bedroom garden, and an internal courtyard in the warehouse, together with the front garden and an internal courtyard in the semi.

The overriding requirement was lushness within a busy setting, providing multiple spaces for quiet time. ‘The owners wanted it very green and lush and not rigid, so it feels natural’ says Andy. But when he first entered the first courtyard area in 2020 he encountered bare earth, with the warehouse at one end and the semi at the other, bound on two sides by an ugly mish-mash of high walls and peering windows on neighboring properties, all typical of this built-up area. But this wasn’t the only challenge ‘You walk through the courtyard to get to the office but you also had to be where you would stop and ponder and simply be in it’ says Andy.


His ingenious solution was to build an arbor cantilevered steel and use it as a framework to run grape vines along wires across the entire 15-meter lomg by a five-meter wide courtyard. Meanwhile, he covered both part walls with arch-bar mesh and trailed them with evergreen Star jasmine, with the trunks of the Grape neatly hidden behind. ‘Te Jasmine looks like a hedge yet it’s just centimeters deep’ says Andy Being deciduous the vines provide summer shade but let in the winter sun. Serving as stepping stones, Bamstone pavers are interspersed with toe-teasing Dichondra. The large pavers are solid but loose at the same time so you can use them to make curves and create scale’ says Andy. And with groundcovers the flooring is permeable, so rainwater doesn’t gather. ‘Massed ground covers inter-planted with herbaceous perennials , create lushness but there is plenty of seasonal interest. There he has created a nook apart from the passageway, enveloped by Crepe Myrtle. You feel nestled in because people must walk around it’ he says.


Meanwhile, in the ceiling cavity of the warehouse, the architects installed a rooftop garden, complete with Spotted Gum Flooring and Fytogreen powder-coated steel planters which Andy has filled with succulent kalanachoe and prostrate Rosemary. Bamstone pavers interspersed with Dichondra are reprised on the first floor, main bedroom level on ‘pedestals’, back-filled with planting medium, to disperse the weight evenly, flanked by planters containing prostrate Rosemary and cotton Lavender, while a Fig Tree lends height.


In the entrance to the semi, the gate was central and the front door offset. ‘I wanted to create a generous open pathway, achieved with large format Bluestone pavers staggering the walkway and allowing groundcovers in between’ says Andy. A small Japanese maple breaks up the symmetry and Silvervein Creeper softens the brickwork and ties in the dark red foliage.
But the trickiest and most imposing feature is the central courtyard. Remains the hero. ‘I love how lush it is for such a challenging space’ says Andy and the dense greenery beautifully offsets all that brickwork.