Mt Martha, VIC – Cutting Landscapes
The Project
Mt Martha was created to showcase Mornington Peninsula’s timeless beauty. The landscape architect only allowed natural timber tones and stones to lift the greenery that the peninsula offers. We worked with our client and the architect to understand what their vision was and ensured that this was delivered to them. Communication was the key to the success of the project.
Delivering Perfection
With our determination to only delivery perfection and our client’s vision for their home, this project was successful in delivery, the vision and the outcome speaks for itself. Once you step into the garden you feel the calm effect this design has on the property. We worked hard to deliver the project in the timeframe we anticipated and was determined to ensure our client was left with a smile to last a lifetime.
Our clients (originally from the UK) wanted to experience what it was truly like to live the dream on our beautiful Mornington Peninsula. The Cutting Landscapes team along with the landscape architect were to make sure they would not be disappointed.
Key Features
One of the main requests from our client was to somehow provide access and a flowing pathway to the neighbouring nature reserve track. We managed to install a classic Peninsula style farm gate into the boundary fence line with a crushed granite pathway winding around the sloping hills providing direct access from the property to the reserve track. All the native feature trees are illuminated and powered from 1 internal switch which can be easily operated from the kitchen when guest arrive to guide them down the long winding driveway. Feature landing steps and gazebo platforms were laid using a natural 600x300mm sawn bluestone and over 2,500sqm of hydroseed was laid to maintain the rolling green hills after construction of the project.
Working With Landscape Architects
It was a pleasure working with Dean from “Outlook Landscape Design” on this project, who is a local Mornington Peninsula based landscape architect. Once again the vision was to blend our natural Peninsula style landscape expertise in with the existing rolling hills and creek valleys of Mt Martha.
All structural timber was to be untreated cypress that would naturally “grey off” along with the decking to blend with the natural surroundings. The landscape architect was only interested in using natural local materials which included the beautiful Hillview granite boulders and crushed granite pathways and driveway.
We insisted that an enduring galvanised steel edge would need to be used to define the driveways and pathways close to the house but were happy to use treated pine edging to define the gardens further away from the property. The landscape architect had some difficulty with ideas in diverting the deluge of water that would come down from the neighbouring hill towards our client’s home on heavy rain days, this was an ongoing issue that the original builders could not seem to resolve. After careful planning with the architect we decided to excavate a “cut off” trench 1m deep around the front side of the property so the water would fall into the trench and then be diverted away from the property and out to the natural creek, we installed commercial grade aggi pipes into the bottom of the trench and then fill the trench with drainage material. We are proud to say that our clients no longer experience problems with flooding even throughout the wettest periods of the year.