Planned Around Your Block.
Malvern was built to entertain in. The suburb surged in the late 1890s, when one building journal reported that the favourite suburb Malvern was booming in the erection of better classed residences running to seven and ten rooms, and those houses still set the terms: deep verandahs, generous rooms, and a garden expected to carry the same weight. So we plan the outdoor living first. A terrace that takes the table cleanly off the back of the house. Retaining and steps that turn the fall of the land into levels you can actually use. Natural stone and rendered finishes that answer the hip slate roofs and cast iron verandahs of a street like Sorrett Avenue, where the c.1889 villas sit on the old carriage drive to a mansion that is long gone. The Kulin name for this ground was Koornang, meaning rising ground, and at roughly 59 metres Malvern is high for the inner south east, so a garden here usually works in levels rather than one flat plane, and the drainage goes in before the paving rather than after. Stonnington’s Garden Suburban precinct strategies ask for space around buildings to accommodate vegetation and planting around the perimeter to strengthen the garden setting, which is how an entertaining garden wants to be laid out anyway. We finish the lot with turf installation in Malvern, and we build the same way across Armadale, Toorak and Glen Iris. One accountable team carries the Malvern build from concept to completion.
