Our client Andrew wants to accommodate himself and his adult son more permanently in his holiday home in Miena on Tasmania’s Central Plateau. Our renovation/extension turns the living space to the north, better encapsulating the views of yingina / Great Lake and the surrounding landscape. Large windows along the northern façade make more of passive solar to heat the home. The existing bedrooms are enlarged and include storage. A lap pool along this façade allows Andrew to keep up his favourite exercise. Importantly, given this home is in a bushfire prone area overlay, our integrated building and landscape design reduces the risk to human life and property through careful material and plant selection.

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To safeguard the property from bushfire, the garden has been designed to incorporate a Building Protection Zone (BPZ) (a defendable space) and a Fuel Modified Zone (FMZ). The concept plan incorporates key principles of landscaping for bushfire to reduce the risk of the garden contributing to house loss during such an event, with trees carefully selected, located and maintained; and fuel continuity broken up. Existing features have been reorganised and/or remade to make better use of the property’s unique microclimates so that indigenous and locally native plants can be grown here with minimal watering. The plant palette includes only those plants indigenous to the Miena area, i.e. it is selected from the Highland Poa Grassland, a Threatened Native Vegetation Community, and (DCO) Eucalyptus coccifera forest and woodland vegetation community. Rocks found on site during the construction process are used to create rockeries rather than formal garden beds, allowing selected alpine and sub-alpine plants to have a cool root run.