A headland garden above the Pacific

The brief was deceptively simple: connect the house to the ocean. The site fell away steeply through sandstone shelves that had been left wild for decades, and the owners wanted a garden that felt inevitable rather than imposed.

We terraced the slope in three broad platforms, each retained by dry-stacked Sydney sandstone that echoes the cliff face below. Between the walls, clipped muehlenbeckia and westringia form green aprons that soften the stonework without competing with the view.

A central staircase of large-format concrete pavers threads the platforms together, wide enough to descend side by side. At the lowest terrace a timber deck cantilevers over the final drop, framing the beach below. In the golden hour the sandstone glows warm and the hedges darken — the garden becomes a series of rooms opening toward the Pacific.