Landscape Architecture · Southern Highlands NSW
Rural Landscaping and Acreage Landscape Design
Nicholas Bray Landscapes designs the grounds of rural properties, country estates and lifestyle acreage across the Southern Highlands and regional NSW. Led by Nicholas Bray, a Registered Landscape Architect, the practice plans the whole property first, then designs, documents and builds the garden at its centre.
This is rural acreage landscaping treated as landscape architecture: the approach, the shelter, the water, the levels and the planting, resolved as one plan. Stock fencing, troughs and pumps, and ongoing mowing or garden maintenance, belong with other trades.
PrincipalNicholas Bray, Principal and Landscape Architect
PropertiesCountry estates, rural holdings and lifestyle acreage
EngagementMaster plan, design, approvals and construction
Native grasses carry the garden out to the bush at the Earth Mounded Garden, below The Gib near Mittagong.
Acreage landscaping services starts with the whole property
On a suburban block the garden is the property. On acreage it is one part of something much larger: a driveway that may run for hundreds of metres, paddocks, dams, sheds and shelter belts, views worth framing and others worth screening. Designing the garden without the rest is how large blocks end up with a fine terrace for outdoor living beside the house and no clear idea where it stops. The first questions on any holding are how big an acreage is in hectares and what its zoning allows.
So every rural landscape design here begins with a master plan for the whole holding. It fixes where the intensive garden sits and where managed ground takes over, how people and vehicles arrive, where water runs and is stored, what protects the house from wind and fire, and the order in which it will be built. Detail, including the rural garden design around the house, is then resolved within that frame, at a pace the owners can sustain.
The same thinking holds on a working farm. There, farm landscaping means the grounds around the house: the arrival from the road, shelter from the westerlies, a garden that can realistically be kept, and a clear edge where it gives way to paddock, laid out so stock, machinery and the working yards keep moving around it.
Country holdings are one part of the practice’s residential landscape design work. This page covers what changes at that scale.
Country Estate, Southern Highlands: house garden, dam and paddocks composed in one master plan.
What a rural landscape design resolves
These are the questions that decide whether a large holding is functional day to day. None of them is about the house, and every one is cheaper to answer on paper than on site.
The approach and arrival
The approach matters more on acreage than anywhere else. Two hundred metres of driveway is either an arrival or a corridor. Alignment, gates, avenue planting and the first view of the house in its surroundings are set out as a sequence, with turning space, parking and service access resolved alongside.
Shelter, frost and cold air
Shelter planting on a Highlands holding begins with the prevailing westerlies and with where cold air drains and pools on a still night. Windbreaks are placed to slow the wind without damming that cold air against the garden, and frost-tender planting goes only where the ground allows it. Shelter belts of local eucalypts can also join up koala habitat across the property.
The garden and paddock edge
A garden of this scale is composed in zones: intensive near the house, extensive beyond it, and a deliberate edge between. A ha-ha, a post and rail fence, a sandstone wall, a hedge or a mown margin each make that boundary differently, and the choice decides how the garden reads from the paddock as much as from the terrace.
Water across the property
Dams, tanks, swales and runoff are part of the design rather than services hidden behind it. Overland flow is directed away from the house and driveway, dam edges are shaped, the plants along them are chosen for wet margins, and irrigation over distance is kept to the zones that justify it, which is what keeps the garden sustainable through a dry summer.
Bushfire and asset protection
On bush fire prone land, a development application in NSW is assessed against the Rural Fire Service guideline Planning for Bushfire Protection. The asset protection zone around the house becomes part of the brief, with species, spacing, hard surfaces and access planned so the garden and the requirements read as one.
Staging and maintenance load
Few large gardens are built in a single season, and few should be. Shelter and structure come first because they take longest to establish, then the garden closest to the house, then the wider grounds. Low maintenance is a design decision rather than a plant list, because a large garden that cannot be maintained fails.
Levels, landform and earthworks
Few rural sites are level where it matters. Cut and fill around the house platform, terraces stepping down a slope and retaining walls in basalt or sandstone are set out together with the drainage behind them, so batters hold and topsoil stays on the hill after a summer storm. Earthworks are designed with the house and driveway, not patched in after them.
Pools, courts and outdoor living
On acreage a pool, plunge pool, tennis court or terrace is one element in a larger composition rather than its centre. Each sits within the managed zone near the house, sheltered from the westerlies and turned to the winter sun, with fencing and planting that keep it in proportion with the paddocks beyond. The practice’s pool landscape design work covers the water itself.
The kitchen garden and orchard
A cool Highlands winter suits a productive garden. Apples, pears, quinces and walnuts that need a true winter chill, a hedged kitchen garden close to the house and a cutting garden sited above the frost hollows give a rural property its working centre, and placed well they make a natural step between the formal garden and the paddock.
Acreage landscaping ideas for Southern Highlands properties
Rural landscaping ideas are only as good as the site they land on. These are the moves that recur across the practice’s work on Highlands acreage, each shaped by frost, westerly wind, basalt and sandstone, and the distance between the house and the boundary.
Make the driveway an arrival. An avenue of oaks, elms or limes, a gate set back from the road with room to pull in, and the first view of the house held until the last bend. There is more on gates, materials and drainage in driveway and entrance ideas for rural properties.
Treat the dam as a garden room. A dam within sight of the house can carry a jetty, a path along its margin and wetland planting at the water’s edge, so it becomes somewhere to walk to rather than infrastructure. The dam jetty, built on undressed ironbark posts with corten caps, shows how.
Plant shelter first. A shelter belt of mixed natives and exotics along the western side, set back so cold air can still drain past it, takes longest to establish and protects everything planted after it. It is the first stage on most Highlands holdings, and it decides how the whole property performs for decades.
Decide where the garden stops. An intensively designed garden of a hectare or less, surrounded by managed paddock, native regeneration or mown grass, is more satisfying and easier to keep than one stretched across the whole holding. Planning the garden zones on acreage sets out how those boundaries are drawn.
Borrow the view. Paddocks, a distant ridge or the escarpment towards Robertson belong in the composition. A low wall in place of a fence, a gap in the hedge or a single specimen tree framing the outlook connects the garden to the country beyond it.
Build in stone that belongs. Dry-stacked basalt from the plateau, local sandstone and crushed gravel weather well through frost and read as part of the place. They suit the walls, steps and edges that hold a large garden together, and they age into the landscape rather than against it.
Country Estate, Southern Highlands: a formal axis near the house, before the garden opens to paddock.
Earth Mounded Garden, Mittagong: mown paths through native tussock grasses where the garden meets the bush.
Clipped hedging, tussock grasses and retained eucalypts along a Highlands driveway.
Rural landscape design for the Southern Highlands
Most of the Highlands sits between about 600 and 900 metres. Frosts arrive in April and run to October, winter westerlies are cold and drying, and summers bring heat and fire weather. Rainfall falls away from Robertson and Kangaloon near the escarpment, where the red basalt soils hold moisture, to Exeter, Sutton Forest and Berrima further west. A garden that thrives at one end of the district can struggle at the other.
The planting palette is chosen for that range: oaks, elms and maples for autumn foliage and winter light, hedging that holds its structure through a real winter, perennials, bulbs and flowers close to the house, and native grass and retained eucalypts where the garden meets the surrounding landscape, which also keeps room for local flora and wildlife. Specimen trees are sited for the size they will reach in fifty years, not five.
Based in Moss Vale, the practice works on rural properties throughout the Southern Highlands, in and around Bowral, Mittagong, Burradoo, Berrima, Exeter, Sutton Forest, Bundanoon, Robertson and Kangaloon, and on country holdings across the South Coast, regional NSW and the rural edges of Sydney.
The Process
How the engagement runs
Landscape design and construction follow the property rather than a single build season, and the master plan holds it together across years where needed.
01
Site reading and master plan
Nicholas Bray walks the property with you and reads it: contours, soil, drainage lines, existing trees, aspect, wind, frost hollows, views and access. The result is a master plan for the whole holding that fixes zones, circulation, water and shelter before any one area is designed.
02
Concept and design development
Each zone is then designed in detail: layout, levels, terraces, and walls and paths in sandstone, basalt or steel sympathetic to the site, and a planting plan with every species named. Photo montage perspectives show how the design will sit in its setting before anything is built.
03
Documentation and approvals
Construction drawings, specifications and planting schedules follow, prepared so a contractor can price and build from them. Where a DA or CC is required, including bushfire assessment, the practice prepares the documentation and manages the application.
04
Construction, staging and handover
The practice manages construction as a design and construct engagement, coordinating stonemasons, concretors, steel fabricators, electricians, plumbers and planting crews through earthworks, drainage, walls, paving and planting. Each stage is handed over with a maintenance schedule for whoever looks after the grounds.
Why a registered landscape architect for rural landscaping
Nicholas Bray is a Registered Landscape Architect (RILA 958) and a member of the Australian Institute of Landscape Architects. He studied landscape architecture in Australia and Canada and horticulture at the Royal Horticultural Society’s garden at Wisley in Surrey, and has more than 30 years in landscape architecture, horticulture and environmental planning. That combination counts most in rural landscapes, where the design problem is as much about soil, water, climate and fire as it is about plants. The practice is realistic and honest about costs from the outset.
| Nicholas Bray Landscapes | Rural landscaping contractor |
|---|---|
| Master plan for the whole property before work begins | Works priced area by area |
| Registered Landscape Architect accountable for the design | Trade licence covering construction |
| Shelter, frost, water and bushfire resolved in the design | Addressed as they arise on site |
| DA, CC and bushfire documentation prepared and managed | Approvals generally left to the owner |
| Staged over years against one plan | Built in a single season |
Selected rural landscaping projects
Rural Sculpture Garden
A contemporary large-scale master plan incorporating pool, dam decking, steel fencing and extensive native and exotic planting, with sculpture placed throughout the grounds.
Country Estate
Landscape architecture across a Southern Highlands country property, combining a formal parterre, woodland garden and mixed borders within one master plan.
Eclectic Country Garden
Sculptural elements, basalt walls and water features set within a farming landscape, with exotic trees and shrubs framing views to the surrounding countryside.
Dam Jetty
A jetty of undressed ironbark posts with corten caps, anchored to bedrock, with seating and a fire pit that bring the dam into everyday use.
Earth Mounded Garden
Bold earth forms and informal native planting tie the house and garden into the bush setting of The Gib above Mittagong.
High Range Seating Wall
A double-curved seating wall in 10 mm corten plate and spotted gum, set in crushed gravel around a fire pit beside the pool garden.
Frequently asked questions
Book a consultation
If you are planning the grounds of an acreage or rural property in the Southern Highlands or regional NSW, book a consultation with Nicholas Bray Landscapes.
0417 278 267 · contact@nicholasbray.net.au · Suite 2, The School of Arts, 471 Argyle Street, Moss Vale NSW 2577