Home>Council Services>Environment>Sustainability>Sustainable Gardening> Sustainable Garden Design

Sustainable Garden Design

Designing a good garden takes time, to ensure that you design a garden that you will enjoy, and which suits our local soil and climate.
Download the Information booklet below for further details on creating your own sustainable garden.

Garden Design Tips

List what you need (shed, washing line, kids swings, entertainment area) and what you want (vegie garden, shade area, pond, fruit trees).
Do a site analysis, (sun, shade, slope, privacy – all the problems that need solving) which will tell you what your site will let you do.
Do a scaled plan or mark out in the garden what will go where, practically and where it looks best. For example, placing a new shed in a shady corner, vegetables where they get full sun, a pond where it can be seen from inside the house, and a tree for shade to the north of the house.
Find a style you like which suits your garden so all the paving, pots, water features, and plants match, especially in a courtyard garden.
Make garden beds bigger and lawns smaller. If you mulch all beds this will reduce your maintenance and enable you to create interesting areas within your garden.

Sustainable Gardening in Darebin Information Booklet - PDF

Sow What When is a simple guide showing when to plant common vegetable and herb seeds in Darebin, when to harvest your produce and some simple planting tips. Printed copies are available.

sow what when brochure

Reducing Lawn Areas

If you want to reduce your lawn area to make bigger garden beds, you need to know what type of lawn you have.
If you have a fine lawn grass such as Rye or Fescue you can mow the lawn low, cover with 8–10 sheets of newspaper (overlapping), add 10–15cm of pea straw on top, wait 3–4 months and then plant directly into it. This must be done when the soil is moist and all the grass should have died.
If you have ‘running’ grasses such as Couch or Kikuyu they will not be eliminated by newspaper and mulch. They are very tough grasses to remove and you can try one of three methods:
1. Cover the grass with a sheet of clear plastic for several weeks in hot weather so that the grass effectively ‘cooks’
2. Mow the lawn area you wish to remove on the lowest mower setting and then dig out the remaining root system
3. Apply chemical herbicide.