Concept design

The plant examples are Florida's and the colour advice assumes soft, humid light. Perth summer light is far harsher — it bleaches colour and exaggerates contrast — so weight the form, texture and shadow guidance much more heavily than the colour guidance.

US publication — ignore the plant names and the regional style examples. The mass-planting rule needs adjusting here: many WA natives are open and see-through, so a group that would read as a solid mass in a humid climate needs more plants and tighter repetition to read as a mass at all in Perth.

North Carolina, in imperial units. Convert as you read: the 4.5 ft minimum front path is about 1.4 m, secondary paths of 2.5 to 3 ft are 750 to 900 mm. Ignore the plant lists, the rain garden sizing and anything about frost — Perth sand, a shallow watertable in parts of the coastal plain and the winter sprinkler ban make those numbers wrong here.

The current version is dated April 2026 and took effect on 10 April 2026, when the special transitional arrangements for Part C ceased. Table B columns 3 to 5 were deleted and replaced by Part D Table D in the April 2024 amendment, so use Table D for site area. Your local planning scheme, a local planning policy or a local development plan can vary any of this — confirm with your council.

These are illustrations, not construction drawings. No levels, no dimensions, no drainage and no irrigation detail. Use them to study composition and palette, not to build from.

It is a demonstration and research project with a budget and an agenda, so it is more densely planted and far better documented than a normal renovation. Treat it as a worked example, not a target.

UK densities, on UK soil, under UK rainfall, using a UK palette. The odd-number grouping rule travels; the per-square-metre count does not, because a Perth palette of banksias, westringias, grasses and succulents has completely different mature spreads. Take the mature width from a WA nursery for the species you are actually using and set your own count.

Deemed-to-comply figures are the standards a council can approve over the counter, not absolute prohibitions. Failing one does not make the work illegal; it means your application is assessed against the design principles instead, which costs time and gives the decision-maker discretion. Some local governments also apply their own local planning policy on top, so check your scheme.

This is the March 2024 edition of the guidelines sitting alongside a 10 April 2026 edition of the Codes themselves. Where the two disagree on a figure, the Codes win — use the guidelines for intent, not for numbers.

North Carolina. Ignore every plant, every climate reference and the seasonal advice. The process, the zone framework and the outdoor-room language transfer directly; the material does not. Its service-zone examples also assume a side yard wide enough to store firewood and bicycles, which many Perth blocks no longer have.

These are illustrative designs for a generic block, not plans for yours, and they are weighted toward planting rather than the service zones. They will not tell you where your bins go.

Two dwellings on one Fremantle lot, which is denser than most renovation blocks. Read the allocation logic rather than copying the layout.

City of Swan specifics. Bin sizes, colours and the rollout date differ by local government, so confirm yours — but every Perth and Peel council is moving to a three-bin system, so three is the number to design around regardless.

Councils buy from several manufacturers and dimensions vary by tens of millimetres. Measure your own bins before you build anything with fixed walls.

If a 4.2 m circle does not exist on your block, the answer is a fold-down or wall-mounted line — measure the specific model you intend to buy rather than assuming. A rotary line needs a concreted ground socket, so it is a decision you make before paving, not after.

Deemed-to-comply figures are what a council can approve over the counter, not a prohibition. Miss one and your proposal is assessed against the design principles instead, which costs time and hands the decision-maker discretion. Local governments can also modify the sight-line and vehicular-access clauses through a local planning policy without WAPC approval, so check your own council's policies before you rely on the state numbers.

These provisions are not law in Western Australia. Building and Energy has continued to disapply the livable housing design requirements — Part G7 of NCC Volume One and Part H8 of Volume Two — under the Building Amendment Regulations (No.2) 2026, so compliance remains voluntary here. Use the numbers as design targets, not as an approval requirement, and note this is the 2022 v1.3 edition of the Standard.

Written for new building work and referenced by the National Construction Code for public and commercial buildings. It does not apply to a private garden by force of law, and buying it will not make your council ask for anything different.

These are the City of Stirling's numbers, dated 6 January 2023. Every WA local government publishes its own crossover guideline and technical specification and the figures differ — widths, subsidies and street-tree setbacks in particular. Use this to learn the shape of the rules, then download your own council's version. Crossovers onto certain major roads also need Main Roads WA approval.

City of Stirling rules. Spacing, presentation times and the number of bins vary between Perth councils, and most are still rolling out the third FOGO bin — check your own council's page and design for three bins regardless.

Written for planners and developers assessing the public realm, so most of the document is about laneways, activity centres and transport hubs rather than back gardens. The surveillance principle and the residential street scenario are the parts that transfer to a suburban block.

Written for the house, not the garden, and its climate-specific sections split Australia into eight zones — check which zone covers your suburb on the guide's Design for climate page before applying the zone-specific advice. The geometry and the shading logic apply unchanged to a pergola, a seat or a paved area.

The article is about building fabric. Applied to a garden, the same physics governs limestone retaining, rendered walls, concrete seats and paving slabs — the difference is that garden mass is almost never insulated, so shading it is your only control.

Perth Metro sits at 25 m elevation near the city and does not represent the whole metropolitan area. Inland suburbs such as Midland, Armadale and Ellenbrook run hotter and get the sea breeze later and weaker; use the site selection menu to pull the nearest station to your block.

Measured at one Western Sydney school over the 2019–20 summer, so the tree species, water-use figures and soil behaviour do not transfer to Perth sand. The surface-temperature comparisons and the shading effect are physics and do transfer directly — Perth's higher summer solar exposure and lower humidity, if anything, make the sunlit numbers worse here.

These are duties of a person conducting a business or undertaking under the Work Health and Safety Act 2020, so they bind anyone you engage rather than you working on your own home. The physiology is the same either way, and the moment you have a contractor or a mate on site for reward the duties are live.

It is a water-use filter, not a shade filter. Canopy density, mature spread, deciduousness and root behaviour near paving all still have to be checked separately — a waterwise plant with a thin open canopy casts very little useful shade.

A purpose-built new house on a subdivided Fremantle lot, so the orientation was chosen rather than inherited. On a renovation you are working around an existing house, and the shade strategy has to be retrofitted to whatever aspect you already have.

NSW policy material aimed at Western Sydney, so ignore the planning-control framing. The material principles hold in Perth, but light-coloured paving here has a trade-off the NSW pages do not raise: white limestone and pale concrete reflect glare and radiant heat upward into shaded seating and onto west walls.

The distance bands are national averages. The page notes that C5 may be extended inland by prevailing winds and local conditions, and Perth's afternoon sea breeze carries salt further east than the nominal figures suggest. Treat the distances as minimums, not as a boundary.

Designation is reviewed periodically, so a block that was not listed when you bought it may be listed now. Check the map for your address rather than relying on memory or on a neighbour.

Written for a person conducting a business or undertaking. A homeowner cutting their own pavers is not bound by the same duties, but the dust is identical and silicosis is irreversible — the controls are the point, not the paperwork.

Supply only, ex-yard, and it is one supplier's list price — not a delivered rate and not an installed rate. Prices move; treat these as a benchmark to quote against, and always confirm the current figure and whether GST and delivery are included before you budget from it.

Published in 2002 and not cheap for a single garden wall. If you only need to understand the material and find someone who builds it, start with the Earth Building Association of Australia instead and leave the handbook to your builder.

National rather than WA-specific. Western Australia has an unusually deep stabilised rammed earth trade, so filter the directory by state and expect the local practitioners to be the most experienced in the country.

The water rating describes an established plant. Everything on the list still needs a full establishment season at a higher frequency, so a bed of "minimum maintenance" plants is a high-water zone for its first summer and a low-water zone after that. The availability filter matters too — plenty of listed species are flagged as limited or no availability in Perth nurseries.

These are style palettes, not water ratings. Cross-check each species in the Waterwise Plants directory before you assign it to a zone, and do not assume a whole palette lands in one hydrozone — the Mediterranean and Cottage lists in particular mix water needs.

The stated target of 10 mm per watering day is a Perth default for sandy soil, not a per-plant requirement. Hydrozoning exists precisely so different zones get different depths and different frequencies — treat 10 mm as the lawn number and work up or down from it.

Josh's House has a bore and a greywater system, which most renovations do not. Read the zone list as a structure to copy, not a specification — the same seven zones on scheme water alone would be a very different scheduling problem.

The drawings are scanned images rather than searchable text, so you have to read them on screen and zoom. They are also a new-build on a subdivided lot with a bore and greywater, so the water sources will not match a typical renovation.

American, so convert the units and ignore the scheduling. Its mulch recommendation of three to four inches is 75 to 100 mm; Water Corporation's Perth figure is 5 to 10 cm of coarse mulch. It also assumes you can water on any day you like, which you cannot here — Perth's two-day roster makes the hydrozone discipline it describes far more important, not less.

The guides are short and do not give a numeric water rating, so they complement the Water Corporation directory rather than replacing it. Coverage is limited to species Kings Park grows and promotes, which skews to WA natives and to Kings Park's own cultivars.

It is a demonstration project on a small Fremantle-area lot, so the block shape and the water systems are not typical. Copy the sheet structure and the level of resolution, not the content.

American and imperial — it recommends scales like 1 inch equals 10 feet. Ignore that and use the metric scales in this lesson (1:50, 1:100, 1:200). The plant material, hardiness zones and turf advice do not apply on the Swan Coastal Plain; the drawing method does.

The on-screen cadastre is a data layer, not a survey. Do not scale a boundary position off it, and do not pay for an imagery extract for a garden concept — the free view is enough for context, and your dimensions must come from your own measure-up.

Nothing Perth-specific — CAD geometry is identical everywhere. Set your drawing units to millimetres before the first line, because every dimension in this course is in millimetres.

Inkscape is a graphics program, not CAD. It has no dimension entities and will happily let you draw something that is not to scale, so build a scale bar into the sheet early and check it against a known distance before you trust anything you have drawn.

Heavy machinery for a suburban block, and it will not draw a garden for you. Nothing you trace off aerial imagery in QGIS is a set-out dimension; the imagery is orthorectified to a tolerance, not to your fence line.

It is a sanity-check tool, not the deliverable. The free tier exports SKP, PNG and STL, so there is no route out of it to a printed, dimensioned sheet at a stated scale. It also needs a live connection.

It has no concept of scale. Use it for option sketching and for the bubble diagram stage, never for the concept plan itself — a scribble that gets treated as a plan is how gardens end up 600 mm short of a bin store.

Print at 100 per cent, not 'fit to page', or the grid comes out at 96 per cent and every square quietly stops being a metre.

Written for major or complex development proposals and built form planning instruments, not backyards. Take the structure and ignore the panel machinery, referral thresholds and fees entirely.

A commercial page from a Perth landscaping business, used here only for its published process — this is not a recommendation, and it is the sort of source this course otherwise avoids. It also states they are not presently taking design-only projects. Compare the package inclusions against two or three other WA designers before you use it as a benchmark for what a design fee should buy.

Written for software design teams. Read "design objectives" as your design brief and "stakeholders" as your household; nothing else needs translating.

The Act covers home building work; some standalone landscaping and some Class 10 structures sit outside that regime. Do not assume either way — confirm which rules apply to your scope before you sign anything, and work through the contracts lesson in Phase 7 first.