I always say the best part of running a landscaping business in this part of the world is that no two jobs are ever the same. The Mid North Coast throws everything at us — sandy soils that drain like a sieve, salty winds that punish anything not designed for the coast, sloping blocks that need real engineering, and clients who, quite reasonably, want a garden that looks after itself most of the year. Last month we wrapped up a full backyard transformation on a property over in Tuncurry, just across the bridge from us in Forster, and it was such a satisfying project I wanted to walk readers through how it came together. If you’ve got a tired coastal block of your own, there might be a few ideas in here worth borrowing.
The starting point
The clients had bought the Tuncurry house about two years earlier — a low-set 1980s brick home on a generous block, two streets back from the breakwall, with a backyard that had clearly been mowed and forgotten for the better part of a decade. The previous owners had planted a row of cocos palms along one fence line that had grown into the power lines, a half-dead lawn that was mostly couch and weeds, no garden beds to speak of, and a Hills Hoist sitting in the middle of the lawn like a rusted monument. The brief was simple: turn it into a backyard the family actually wanted to spend time in. They had two teenagers, a kelpie, and the usual list of weekends-away that meant the garden had to survive without weekly attention.
The slope question
The first thing we noticed on the site walk was that the block had more fall in it than the clients had realised. From the house out to the back fence dropped almost a metre over fifteen metres — gentle enough that you didn’t see it walking around, dramatic enough that water from heavy rain was pooling against the back of the house. Step one was always going to be a low retaining wall to terrace the yard into two flat zones, with a properly graded drainage solution behind the wall. We used dressed sandstone blocks for the wall — they suit the coastal aesthetic and don’t fight the brick of the house — and ran a 100mm ag drain behind it to a soakaway in the back corner. For more on how we approach this kind of work, our piece on retaining walls for sloped coastal blocks covers the design principles in detail.
Soil: the coastal challenge nobody warns you about
Tuncurry blocks, like a lot of properties on the lake side of the bridge, sit on pure sandy soil. Pure sand drains beautifully, which sounds great, but it also holds almost no water or nutrients in the root zone. Plants struggle, lawns burn off in two weeks of no rain, and any feeding washes straight through to the water table. We brought in fifteen cubic metres of premium garden soil mix and another eight cubic metres of compost-rich loam for the lawn area, and we worked it into the top 200mm of the existing sand using a small Dingo. Skipping this step is the single biggest reason coastal gardens fail, and it’s the boring step that nobody photographs for Instagram.
Plant selection for a Tuncurry backyard
The client wanted a mix of native feel and traditional garden lushness, which we delivered through layering. Along the back fence we planted a screen of Lilly Pilly ‘Resilience’ (psyllid-resistant, dense, fast-growing in good soil) interspersed with Coastal Banksia for the magic of seeing honeyeaters arrive within weeks of planting. The mid-layer used Westringia ‘Grey Box’ for structure and a long flush of dwarf Native Frangipani for fragrance. Closer to the alfresco we put in clumping Lomandra ‘Tanika’ for movement, three feature Grass Trees for sculptural impact, and a small grove of Cabbage Tree Palms (Livistona australis) to give the whole back corner a proper Australian east-coast character. Our guide to hardy native plants for Forster gardens covers most of the species we used and why they work here.
Irrigation: the upgrade that changed the brief
The clients had originally not budgeted for full irrigation — they figured they’d hand-water for the first season and let the plants establish on their own. We pushed back. On a Tuncurry sand block, hand-watering means you’ll water religiously for a fortnight and then go on holiday and come home to a graveyard. We installed a four-zone drip irrigation system with a Hunter Hydrawise smart controller, separate zones for the natives, the perennial bed near the alfresco, the lawn, and the pots. The controller adjusts run times based on local weather forecasts, which is exactly what a Mid North Coast property needs given how variable our rainfall can be. Our piece on irrigation for Forster gardens goes into the detail of the system we use.
The alfresco zone
Where the old Hills Hoist used to sit, we built a 5m × 4m paved alfresco zone using sandstone-coloured concrete pavers laid on a properly compacted road-base bed, with a timber pergola overhead and a star jasmine climbing the eastern post. The pergola gives shade through summer afternoons and lets winter sun through once the leaves drop back. The clients have already had three friend gatherings there since handover and tell us the kids’ homework now happens out there too. For more on how to design these spaces well, see our guide to outdoor entertaining areas in Forster.
The lawn that we did keep
The client wanted some real lawn — somewhere for the kelpie to chase a tennis ball — but not the wall-to-wall couch that was there before. We laid a smaller lawn area in Sir Walter buffalo, which handles the part-shade conditions better than couch and stays greener through winter without anywhere near as much water. The lawn is on its own irrigation zone, generously edged with brick mowing strips so it doesn’t creep into the garden beds, and sized so that one mow takes ten minutes rather than the previous owner’s epic Saturday mornings.
The result, six weeks on
I went back last week to check on the planting (we always do a six-week post-install visit) and the garden is genuinely thriving. The Lilly Pillies have already put on a foot of new growth, the natives are flushing with new leaf, the lawn is establishing, and the alfresco zone is clearly being used hard. The clients told me they’ve been spending evenings out there with a cup of tea after dinner, watching the light change behind the new screen of trees, which is about the best feedback a landscaper can get.
What we learned (or re-learned) on this job
Three things stand out from this Tuncurry job. First, do not skip the soil prep, especially on lake-side sandy blocks. Second, irrigation is not a luxury — it’s the difference between a garden that survives and one that doesn’t. Third, less lawn and more layered planting almost always makes a coastal yard easier to maintain, not harder. If your Tuncurry, Forster, Pacific Palms or Smiths Lake block is at a similar starting point — tired, neglected, hard to use — we’d love to come and have a look. The right design plus honest soil and irrigation work can transform a block in a single season. Our low-maintenance Forster garden guide is a good starting point if you want to think about your own space first.