Landscaping Services
Hard and soft landscaping, levelling and outdoor structures.
We cover 3 regions and 149 suburbs across Victoria. Pick your area below. Each page covers the councils, site conditions and permit considerations specific to that part of the state.
What landscaping services actually involves
Landscaping is mostly drainage and levels with planting on top. Where water goes when it rains determines whether the rest of the work survives, and on a sloping block it determines whether it survives the first winter.
Changing site levels is also the part most likely to need approval, and the part most likely to affect a neighbour. Cut and fill that redirects water onto adjoining land is a common source of disputes, and it is far cheaper to design around than to remediate.
Technical requirements
- Site level changes and permit triggers
- Surface and subsurface drainage design
- Soil preparation on reactive clay
- Plant selection for local climate and aspect
How the job runs
- Survey existing levels and identify where water currently goes
- Design levels, drainage and hard landscaping together, not separately
- Confirm whether the level changes trigger a permit
- Excavate, install drainage and construct retaining and hard surfaces
- Prepare soil, plant and mulch
- Establishment period with maintenance
What goes wrong
The failures we get called out to fix are consistent. These are the ones worth asking any builder about before you engage them.
- Solving surface levels without solving subsurface drainage
- Redirecting stormwater onto a neighbouring property
- Planting into unimproved reactive clay
- Building retaining as a landscaping element without engineering where it needed it
Tell us the address, we will tell you what applies
Tell us the address and what you are planning.
We reply the same business day.
Landscaping Services by area
3 regions, 149 suburbs. Each page is specific to that area.
Common questions
These answers apply wherever the job is. Anything specific to your area is on the relevant area page above, and anything specific to your property is a conversation.
Do I need a permit to change site levels?
Cut and fill is not automatically exempt work. Once levels change enough to need retaining, or the change sits near a boundary, near an easement, or on a property carrying an overlay, approval becomes likely. Filling over a sewer or drainage easement is its own problem and the asset owner has a say regardless of what council decides. The practical approach is to treat any real change in level as needing a check first, because reversing earthworks after the fact is expensive and sometimes not possible.
How do you handle drainage on a sloping block?
The first question is where the water is legally allowed to go, and the answer is the property's legal point of discharge. Not the neighbour's yard, and not simply downhill. Once that is established, the design works backwards from it. Surface falls move water off paving and lawn, agricultural drain behind retaining relieves the pressure that pushes walls over, and pits and pipes carry the volume. Most drainage failures on a slope are not capacity problems. Something was connected to nowhere in particular and it worked until the first real downpour.
What is the best time of year to landscape in Victoria?
Autumn is the strongest window for planting and turf. The ground is still warm, the rain is more reliable, and roots get established before summer arrives. Spring works too, though anything planted late is facing its first summer with a shallow root system and needs watering to match. Summer installation is possible and costs more in water and attention. Winter is fine for hard landscaping, but wet clay sites become difficult to work and to get machinery onto without damaging what is already there.