LANDSCAPE DESIGN · Lower North Shore
Landscape Design in Neutral Bay
Operating for over 20 years on the Lower North Shore, Neutral Bay, Think Outside Gardens is your go-to for Landscape and Garden Design.
As your project gets started, we will set up a meeting to understand your needs and the space you’re working with. We’ll talk about ideas, materials, and take inspiration from our past projects to see how they fit your home.
After the meeting, we will send over a quick questionnaire for you to fill out. The questionnaire, in conjunction with the insights gathered from our initial conversation, will serve as a foundation for a comprehensive project overview that is tailored for your new garden.
With experience within and around Neutral Bay, our understanding of the area is extensive. Our collection of projects and experience lets us confidently create garden designs and build landscapes of various forms.
If you have question about our services or your own project, please do not hesitate to contact us at 1300 460 690.
If you would like to browse through our other work – View Projects
Why Neutral Bay is different
Neutral Bay sits between two extremes and gets the awkward parts of both. Blocks range from apartment courtyards barely 20m² to older harbourside houses with real fall, and the suburb’s ridge and gully topography means a lot of sites drop away steeply from the street. Ben Boyd Road and the Military Road spine bring apartment density, so overlooking is constant, and you’re often designing privacy before anything else. Where the land runs down toward Shell Cove and Hayes Street, north facing aspect and water glimpses are worth designing around. The sandstone shelf underneath most of the suburb sets the ceiling on how much you can excavate.
Services in Neutral Bay
Work here splits between compact courtyard and terrace design for the apartment and semi stock, and split level garden design on the steeper harbourside blocks, with retaining, stepped terracing and integrated seating. Plunge pools where the fall and access allow.
A project in Neutral Bay
This Neutral Bay garden works a compact block hard. A covered outdoor room sits alongside a slim rectangular pool with a dark interior, so the water reads as a reflective surface rather than a bright blue feature. Frameless glass fencing keeps the sightline from the deck through to the garden unbroken, and the established tree has been retained and designed around rather than removed, giving instant canopy and privacy from the neighbouring roofline. Timber decking runs the full width to make the entertaining area feel larger, with dark boundary fencing and layered planting closing the space in.
Neutral Bay council & site notes
North Sydney Council
Parts of Neutral Bay fall within heritage conservation areas, particularly the older residential pockets away from Military Road, where street facing fencing and front garden changes need development consent. Tree preservation orders apply to established trees. The suburb's sandstone base means excavation for pools or level changes often needs rock removal, which is worth establishing early because it moves both cost and program. Steeper sites typically require engineered retaining and geotechnical input.
Neutral Bay FAQs
Yes. A lot of Neutral Bay stock is apartments, semis and terraces, so compact courtyards and side returns are a large share of our work here, designing for privacy, screening and usable seating in a small footprint.
Steeper harbourside blocks usually need terracing rather than levelling, which means engineered retaining and stepped garden zones. It adds cost, but it also creates the separate outdoor rooms and the outlook people want from these sites.
Often yes, though excavation is the constraint rather than footprint. Sandstone sits close to the surface across much of the suburb, and access on narrow streets limits machinery size. Plunge pools suit most sites better than full length pools.
In the conservation pockets, yes. Street facing work generally needs consent rather than being exempt development. Rear gardens are usually less constrained.
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