Tight Access Landscaping Adelaide

How To Landscape A Backyard With Tight Access.

Many Adelaide back gardens that require landscaping, have limited access to drive earth moving equipment through. When tight access; which is generally less than 1000mm, for excavators and bobcats that are strong enough to perform medium to large earthworks, becomes a problem, or when required to transport loam, sand and quarry rubble from the street to a backyard, there is really only one practical solution, crane it over the house.

Tight access landscaping equipment can pass through very narrow widths, some need just 900mm to pass through. If the backyard is relatively flat, these small bobcats and excavators can be use full. However, there are situations when rear access is as tight as 600mm; in fact it happens more often than you might think, especially around Adelaide’s eastern suburbs and up around Greenwith; north east of Adelaide.

This Greenwith landscaping project was one such example.

The clients loved another landscaping project we had recently completed at Wynn Vale; displayed on this website but was sure it was not possible due to the tight access restrictions.
Not being landscapers to shy away from a problem, I replied

Anything is possible

and the show began.

Manual excavation was the only way to achieve the correct levels. Careful consideration was given to the landscape design, so nothing had to be removed from the backyard.

A 100 tonne crane lifted 30 tonne of loam, 20 tonne of quarry rubble, 5 tonne of sand and 5 tonne of aggregate over the house to the back garden. Unfortunately, the concrete blocks used to construct the retaining walls and the pavers had to be manually carried around.

Boral Heathstone concrete blocks were used for the curved retaining walls and staircases. Matching ‘almond’ bullnose capping finished off the top and always adds a touch of class.

An automatic drip irrigation system, complete with 240 volt timer unit and battery back-up, was installed to water the garden areas.

The backyard is exposed to full Sun, so for the synthetic turf, our ‘Burnside’ artificial grass was chosen. One advantage of this type of artificial grass is that it’s 30% cooler to touch due to Infrared Reflective (IR) technology, ideal for young children to play on.
There are many advantages to laying artificial grass over natural lawn, low maintenance and cost savings over the years are the two main reasons many people are choosing to replace their natural turf with a synthetic turf.

Boral Classic Pave pavers were used as a border around the artificial grass, colour matching the retaining wall.

All garden beds were prepared with a quality organic loam, then planted out with variety of plants including Cordyline “Electric Pink”, Lomandra Longifolia, Lomandra “Tanika” and Pittosporum “Silver Sheen”.
To keep moisture below the ground, an organic water saver mulch was used to top dress all of the garden beds.

Finally, Boral Promenade; a larger format concrete paver, was used to pave the ground level by the back door, blending perfectly with the concrete block retaining walls.

Needless to say, the clients were extremely happy with the result.