Marking its first year, the Landscape Australia Awards championed innovation and sustainability in landscape architecture and design.
The new spatial arrangement of The Winter Garden provides glimpses into the site’s former life as a tennis court.
Two private residential gardens have been recognised in the inaugural Landscape Australia Awards .
Named the winner of the Residential Design – Large category, The Winter Garden Tennis Court by Timothy Mitchell Landscape Architecture employs the principles of adaptive reuse to reimagine an old tennis court on a property on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula as a vibrant garden. The project shows how a once-stagnant site can be made atmospheric and enjoyable, through what the jury described as “careful subtraction, addition and reconfiguration.”
The garden introduces Dromana granite, circular concrete cattle troughs and bands of Filetti paving placed between retained concrete strips.
Image: Ann-Maree Winter
“[The Winter Garden Tennis Court] demonstrates the power of a minimalist approach to resource use and a maximalist approach to planting,” their citation added.
Garden beds occupied with a combination of native and exotic plants, terraces, arbours, planters and paths have been constructed using salvaged concrete, steel and slate, minimising the introduction of new materials.
Ultimately the garden was hailed by the jury as “a model of low-material-resource landscape transformation [bringing] together environmental thrift, artistic vision and horticultural knowledge to create a resilient, honest and beautiful garden.”
Commendations for this award include Greybox by Emily Simpson Landscape Architecture, Thora Property by Bede Brennan and Garden Juju, Hubbe Court by Landskap and Kauri Lane by Aspect Studios and RPS.
Big Little Bondi Garden interacts with the community by embracing a lack of order and boundaries.
Big Little Bondi Garden by Bushy Landscapes prevailed in the Residential Design – Small category, presenting a compact 35-square-metre front yard with a depth seldom realised within a suburban footprint.
Deserting a front fence and blurring boundaries, this intervention maximises the potential of the minute plot and minimises material output by embracing the unruly.
The project blends functional, aesthetic and ecological ambitions, using a pre-European vegetation condition as a reference ecosystem for plant selection. The resulting rich, layered environment and plant discernability further elevates the garden’s impact.
“This is a small garden with large implications – it shows how residential landscapes can speak to ecological memory, support biodiversity and strengthen everyday human connection. It illustrates the power of residential projects when values take precedence,” the jury said.
Bondi Beach Semi by EBLA Studio was commended within this category.
Four finalists have been named for the City of Melbourne’s 2026 City Design Award, which recognises design excellence in architecture, landscape architecture and urban design.
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