By using traditional plants in unexpected ways and mixing manicured with wild elements, Melbourne landscape architect Bethany Williamson has produced a character-rich garden.

Photographer: Martina Gemmola | Design: Bethany Williamson

A green-and-white palette and enveloping masses of tiered planting helped shape this suburban Melbourne “country garden in the city” by landscape designer Inge Jabara.

Photographer: Marnie Hawson | Design: Inge Jabara

This Melbourne garden is so abundant and established it looks as though it’s been the life-long companion to the Victorian-era weatherboard home it surrounds. In fact, it’s a recent development, installed in tandem with the home’s renovation two years ago.

Photo: Derek Swalwell | Design: Ben Scott Garden Design

The request was for a naturalistic garden, and so garden designer Sam Cox created a slice of inner-city bushland that thrums with life.

Photographer: Marnie Hawson | Design: Sam Cox

Beauty and bounty are perfect bedmates in this suburban Melbourne produce garden created by an avid horticulturist Hendrik Van Leeuwen.

Photographer: Claire Takacs | Design: Hendrik Van Leeuwen

This small tropical garden features award-winning design in the way it transformed a petite patch into an inviting, tropical-themed outdoor room filled to the brim with low-maintenance plants.

Photographer: Brigid Arnott

Peter Fudge reorganised the outdoor areas of this heritage home into a series of relaxation zones. In the front garden, there’s a beautifully landscaped pool area, a cosy conversation spot with firepit, and wide sandstone paths lined with layered greenery.

Photo: Prue Ruscoe | Design: Peter Fudge

Once a barren stretch of lawn, this large Melbourne garden has been expertly shaped into a lovely, layered wonderland befitting a special historic home. A bronze sculpture, Chimpanzee Hands by Melbourne artist Lisa Roet, is a focal point of the front garden, where tulip trees form the tall canopy layer and lower beds contain Liriope muscari, Sedum ‘Autumn Joy’ and Clivia.

Photo: Claire Takacs | Design: Eckersley Garden Architecture

Making an evergreen garden a top priority in the reinvention of their home has paid off in spades for this Melbourne family. The leafy outdoor dining area is partially shaded by a cantilevered pergola covered in silver vein creeper, while the view extends past a canopy of lime-green Gleditsia foliage to a row of dwarf spotted gums.

Photo: Martina Gemmola | Design: Eckersley Garden Architecture

Gem-like flowers, verdant lawns and towering foliage combine in this tropical Queensland garden. A pathway laid with local river rocks leads through this lush garden and flowering cordylines and rows of aloe trees (foreground) run the length of the path.

Photo: Anastasia Kariofyllidis | Design: Marlene O’Rielley and Grant Mayfield

Clever use of space and a green-on-green palette has transformed this inner-city terrace into a private oasis thanks to designer Lisa Ellis. The journey from the dining area to the sitting zone, is enveloped by lovely layers of green.

Photo: Marnie Hawson | Design: Lisa Ellis

The outside world disappears in this private European-style courtyard garden of luminous greens and wondrous shapes. The space is deceptively expansive. “We’ve enhanced the sense of depth by layering the plants – mixing climbers, shrubs and lower ground covers,” says Kate Seddon. “I particularly love the way the solid paving dissipates into steppers dotted through the garden. It helps enhance the amount of greenery and make the space feel bigger.”

Photo: Robert Blackburn | Design: Kate Seddon Landscape Design

Horticulturist and founder of The Greenwell Company, Mark Paul, created his sustainable Sydney garden out of a sandstone base, using zero soil. Fascinatingly, most of the plants grow in a 200mm-thick, soil-less growing medium patented by Mark consisting of “waste material that would otherwise be destined for landfill.”

Photo: John Paul Urizar | Design: The Greenwell Company

This Sydney garden has been elevated in more ways than one, with a mix of circular lawn, modern coastal planting and a wonderful palette of silver and green. Flowing over the wall is Dichondra ‘Silver Falls’. A cardboard palm (Zamia furfuracea) can be seen on the left.

Photo: Simon Whitbread | Design: Lyndall Keating of Garden Society

Layers of textured foliage give this evergreen Launceston garden its sense of magnificence perfectly suited to the regency-style home. Rich bursts of colour from Magenta gladioli and white dame’s rocket (Hesperis matronalis) peek through the green in many areas of the garden.

Photo: Claire Takacs

For owners Marg and Rob, this restored 19th Century garden has been a 30-year pursuit. The magnificent garden features an ever-changing display of fragrant roses, azaleas, lavender and camellias along with citrus trees, potted herbs and strawberries.

Photo: Annette O’Brien | Design: Marg and Rob Turnbull

A soothing soundscape is created by this basalt waterfall in a bushland retreat 30 minutes out of Melbourne’s CBD. When the owners purchased the property in 1997, it was a bare paddock without a single tree on it. These days, the bush garden has the atmosphere of a national park.

Photo: Claire Takacs | Design: Sam Cox

This stunning edible garden on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula is textures, fragrant and dotted with colour. Rosemary, mint and the pink flowerheads of Sedum ‘Autumn Joy’ mingle with citrus and roses in tones of white and lemon.

Photo: Claire Takacs | Design: Mary Loucas

This rural garden in central Victoria, named Laikithi by its owners, features an abundance of plants which constantly change depending on the seasons. In this image, a bird house peeks out from the garden bed which features mauve Ajuga ‘Caitlin’s Giant’, silver-blue Sedum ‘Autumn Joy’, golden feverfew, purple Lophomyrtus ‘Black Stallion’, Cotinus ‘Grace’ and Sambucus nigra ‘Black Lace’.

Photo: Simon Griffiths | Design: Gail van Rooyen

Designed as “a journey of interconnected zones” this minimalist, manicured garden on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula provides the perfect spot for the homeowners to meditate. Clipped balls of Westringia and Buxus give this garden its sculptural appeal.

Photo: Simon Griffiths | Design: Ben Scott

The 19th Century garden at Bronte House was restored by custodian Anna van der Gardner, pictured strolling along one of the historic pathways under arches laden with roses and other sweet-smelling climbers.

Photo: Prue Ruscoe | Design: Anna van der Gardner

A gravel path winds past statice (*Limonium perezii) in this gorgeous biodiverse paradise that attracts an increasing range of bird species each year. The English-meets-Australian garden in nothern NSW was started from scratch by its owner Carolyn Robinson.

Photo: Kim Woods Rabbidge | Carolyn Robinson

Some of the loveliest gardens are those shaped by years of dedication and gentle persistence. Evandale, in South Australia, is one such garden, having been nurtured for decades by fifth-generation graziers Jenni and Dick Evans. Take a full tour here.

Photo: James Knowler

Working with a large sloping site, landscape designer Claudia Nevell shaped a many-layered tropical wonderland at her home on the NSW North Coast. Towering palms and vast thickets of tropical plants stretch out in every direction, giving the impression that the garden occupies a luxurious tract of natural rainforest.

Photos: Scott Hawkins | Design: Claudia Nevell

Uniting a house and its garden in a harmonious composition is at the heart of all good landscape schemes, says Melbourne designer Lachie Anderson of Lachie Anderson Garden Design. It was the underlying aim of his reworking of this garden. in the historical goldfields city of Ballarat.

Photo: Simon Griffiths | Design: Lachie Anderson Garden Design