Landscaping in Hampton, built for bayside sand

• Garden makeovers. A full rework of a yard that has stopped working for you. Often it is the last job once the house has been renovated.
• Paving and paths. Front entries, side paths, patios and alfresco areas, laid on a base that is compacted properly so the sand underneath cannot let them sink.
• Retaining walls and raised beds. Walls here are more often about lifting a bed, squaring off levels or holding a boundary than holding back a hill.
• Planting and garden beds. Hardy, salt-tolerant and indigenous plants where the sea breeze hits, softer choices in the sheltered corners.
• Lawns. Turf is one part of a bigger garden for us. If a new lawn is the main job, our page on instant turf in Hampton covers it properly.
• Artificial grass. For a shady side courtyard or a strip where real grass will never be happy.
• Irrigation. Hunter gear, with a registered plumber on the team. On free-draining sand, a proper watering system is often what keeps new planting alive through February.

Hampton sits on the sandy country that runs down the bay side of Melbourne. Bayside Council's own gardening advice describes the local soils as largely sandy, nutrient poor, freely draining and high in salt. On a real block that is the reverse of the clay suburbs. Water and fertiliser run straight past the roots, and sand that dries right out can start shedding water instead of soaking it up.

So most of the hidden work on a sandy block is soil. We dig organic matter and a good garden mix into new beds and under any new lawn, add a wetting agent where the ground has turned water repellent, and set the watering up to soak deep and less often. Paving gets the same thinking from another angle. Loose sand shifts when it gets wet, so the base goes down in compacted layers and the edges are held firm so nothing creeps.

Then there is the bay. Hampton's foreshore runs from Picnic Point to Brighton Beach, and on the streets closest to it the wind carries salt. Plenty of popular nursery plants scorch and sulk in that. Out in the weather we lean on salt-tolerant and locally indigenous species, and keep the leafy, delicate plants behind the house or a fence where they are sheltered. Bayside runs a community nursery that grows indigenous plants, and its species lists are a good place to start for the exposed spots.

Hampton began as market gardens and filled in quickly in the 1930s, when those gardens were subdivided. The War Service Homes Commission built 300 homes here too. Walk the streets either side of Hampton Street, Bayside's longest shopping strip, and that history still shows: Edwardian weatherboards, interwar bungalows and newer homes mixed in between, with many of the older places renovated or extended.

That shapes the work. In a suburb like this the garden is usually the last thing done after a renovation. The extension is finished, the builders have gone, and the backyard is compacted fill, offcuts and a few tired shrubs. Out the front, a period home often deserves better than a patchy lawn and a cracked path. There we keep things in proportion with the house: a proper path to the door, low hedging or planting that frames the verandah, and materials that suit the era instead of fighting it.

Where an older home has been knocked down and rebuilt, the new garden still sits on the same sand. Our new build landscaping work handles that in one job: levels, soil, paving, planting and lawn, so the yard is ready when you move in.

Older gardens around here often come with big established trees, and Bayside protects a lot of them. Under Council's Local Law you need a permit to remove a tree on private land once its trunk circumference is more than 155cm, measured 1 metre above the ground. For a tree with several trunks, Council adds the four largest together. A tree on Bayside's Significant Tree Register needs a permit even to prune, and if your block sits under a planning overlay, other rules can apply as well, so check Council's planning map.

So I plan a garden around the good trees instead of assuming they will come out. That means digging by hand around roots, choosing plants that cope with shade under the canopy, and keeping heavy paving and walls back from the root zone. If a tree really must come out, Council has the final say, so talk to them first and we will build around whatever they decide.

1. Ring 0489 952 492 or send photos through the quote form. A few wide shots of the whole yard tell me the most.
2. I come out and walk the block with you, look at the soil, trees, sun and side access, and talk through how you want to use the space. No call-out fee.
3. A written quote follows, with labour, materials and waste each priced on their own line.
4. We book a start date and tell you early if heavy rain is going to move it.
5. On site we work clean, sweep up every day and keep the street side tidy for the neighbours.
6. At handover we go through watering for the new planting and lawn, which matters more on sand than almost anywhere.

No two yards here are alike, so I price from the block, not from a page. What I can tell you is where the money does the most good. On sand, the work you never see is the work that keeps the garden alive: soil improvement, a compacted base under paving and watering that reaches the roots.

If the budget is tight, I would rather build a smaller patio and a garden that gets through its first summer than a big one sitting on poor ground. The cheapest quote usually saves its money in exactly those hidden layers, and on sand it shows by the second summer.

Regal Landscaping is family owned, and I am the one who comes out to look at your yard. We have landscaped Melbourne's south-east since 2013, laid 15,000 square metres of turf and hold 5.0 stars from 60+ Google reviews. We carry public liability insurance and WorkCover, and irrigation plumbing is done by a registered plumber on the team.

Call me on 0489 952 492 or send a few photos through the quote form. The visit and the quote are both free. Close by, we also lay turf in Hampton East and do landscaping in Cheltenham, and every suburb we cover is on our service areas page.