Landscaping in Mount Waverley, starting with the garden that came with the house

The bones of a Mount Waverley garden are usually already in place: mature trees, old hedges along the fence, beds somebody planted a long time ago. The job is deciding what stays, what goes and what gets rebuilt properly. That tends to mean some mix of:

• A new lawn. The tired couch and weed mix comes out, the ground gets ripped, levelled and topped, and a fresh Sir Walter Buffalo lawn goes down. We've laid 15,000 square metres of turf, and the prep underneath is where a lawn is won or lost.
• Soft landscaping that edits rather than erases. Keep the planting that still earns its spot, clear what's finished, and replant for screening and shape.
• Paths redone. Old concrete paths crack and lift over the years, worst of all near big trees. We break them out and lay new paving on a proper base.
• Steps and low walls. Where the block falls away, a few steps or a low retaining wall turn a slope into space you can actually use.
• Watering sorted. A new lawn on a sloping block needs water where it counts, so we put in Hunter irrigation, with a registered plumber on the team.

Mount Waverley grew in stages, and you can still read the stages in its gardens.

The oldest streets sit close to the Village. They date from the 1930s, when the Glen Alvie estate was sold as country club living, and Sherwood Park's streets are still lined with date palms. These are the most established gardens in the suburb: big canopy, old hedges, and neighbours who notice every change. Work here is careful work.

Around the station, the real growth came in the 1950s, with a run of A.V. Jennings estates in what was a declared brick area. Those solid postwar brick homes are now around seventy years old, and so are their gardens. They usually want a full refresh rather than a light trim.

Down near Blackburn Road is Pinewood. Jennings bought the farmland in 1957 and named the estate after a row of pine trees on it, and the shopping centre opened in 1960. The first gardens there went in around the same time, and a lot of them are ready to be properly redone.

The name isn't just for show. The suburb rises out of a deep valley to the south, enough of a rise to earn the word "Mount", which was added to the name in 1905 to tell it apart from Glen Waverley, renamed that same year. The reservoir on High Street Road sits on one of the highest points.

So plenty of blocks here have a genuine fall, front to back or side to side. A fall is good news if you use it. Set the surface levels so water runs away from the house and off the lawn, step the paths where the grade gets steep, and hold the ground with walls only where it truly needs holding.

Under a lot of these gardens there's clay, as there is across much of Monash, and clay doesn't drain on its own. Put clay and a slope together and most established gardens have at least one wet corner, usually on the low side or the shady south side. The fix is rarely dramatic: correct falls, drainage where the water gathers, and good soil under the new lawn. It just has to happen before the turf goes down, not after.

Mount Waverley has two proper pockets of bush. Damper Creek Conservation Reserve is about 11 hectares of bushland, a narrow strip following the creek north of the station. Valley Reserve covers about 15 hectares and gives you a picture of how this area looked before the houses arrived. Some blocks back straight onto one or the other.

It's a lovely thing to live next to, but it changes the garden. The bush edge brings shade, damp ground and a steady drop of leaves and bark. We plan for it: drainage where the low ground holds water, shade-happy planting along the back fence, and lawn only where it gets enough sun to hold.

One more thing worth knowing. In December 2023 the council closed part of Damper Creek reserve after cinnamon fungus, Phytophthora cinnamomi, was found there. It's no risk to people, but it kills a lot of native plants and it moves in soil. If your block backs onto either reserve, keep soil, mulch and garden waste on your side of the fence, and avoid plants that seed themselves into bushland. We work in your yard, never in the reserve.

There's no standard price for a garden renovation, but two questions on the site walk tell me most of what yours will involve.

Does the block drain? If it does, the money goes into the things you see every day: lawn, planting, paving. If it doesn't, drainage comes first, and on a sloping block it's usually the best-spent part of the whole job.

How much of the old garden is staying? Mature trees and hedges you keep cost nothing and make the new work look settled from day one. Clearing and carting away decades of overgrowth is real work before anything new arrives, so it gets its own line on the quote, next to labour and materials.

Me, first. I walk every job myself before anyone picks up a shovel, and if part of your plan won't work on your block, I'll say so on the day. We carry public liability insurance and WorkCover, and we've been doing this since 2013.

We're based in Clayton South, about 15 minutes from Mount Waverley, and we cover the suburbs around it too, including Glen Waverley, Oakleigh and Clayton South itself. The full list is on our service areas page.

Call 0489 952 492 or send a few photos through the quote form. We walk the garden together, you tell me what bugs you about it, and you get a written quote with each part priced on its own line. No call-out fee, and no pressure to do everything at once.