Salt wind is the great editor. Plant the wrong thing within a kilometre of the surf and it browns off by August; plant the right palette and the same conditions produce the silvery, wind-sculpted look inland gardeners pay designers to fake. This design works with the editor.
The idea
Coastal style is a texture story: silver-grey foliage against deep green, fine tussocks against leathery leaves, everything low and dense enough to shrug off wind. Colour comes in native bursts, banksia candles, westringia's non-stop mauve, rather than delicate blooms the wind would shred anyway.
The palette
The frontline: Rhaphiolepis umbellata and Casuarina Cousin It. The two toughest characters in the design: rhaphiolepis makes leathery deep-green mounds that take full frontal salt wind and still flower white every spring, while the casuarina drapes like green hair over every wall and edge.
The body of the garden: Westringia Blue Gem massed, with Poa poiformis drifts. Westringia is the definitive coastal shrub, it grows on clifftops, and the blue-green poa is its perfect fine-textured foil. Together they're the "sea heath" look that carries the whole design.
The trees: Tuckeroos for shade, one Olive for silver. Tuckeroo is the beachfront-council tree for a reason, glossy, wind-firm, and tidy. The olive earns its place purely on that grey-green Mediterranean shimmer against a blue sky.
The exclamation mark: one Dragon Tree. Sculptural, slow, utterly salt-proof, and the single plant guests will ask about.
How to plant it
Coastal soil is usually sand pretending to be soil, dig in compost at planting and mulch with something that won't blow away (we like coarse pine bark or even pebble over jute mesh on windy sites). Stake the tuckeroos for their first year. Everything here is front-line tolerant; if your street is one back from the water, you can push the palette harder with anything from our natives range.
Good to know
This palette overlaps heavily with the water-wise garden (salt-tolerant usually means drought-tolerant) and the lower-maintenance garden. Windy but not salty? Same list works. Load the pack below into the garden pricer to size it for your block.
Ready to make it real? Your instant garden pack is just below: every plant in this design, live-priced from today's stock, one click to add the lot to your cart or open in the garden pricer and make it yours.