My back yard currently looks like a sink hole; or a dig site in Jurassic Park. Yes folks, we’ve finally kicked off the BIG renovation. The beginning of a 2 (or so), year project to get this house into the shape we want.

It’s taken slightly more than six years of living here to really get a feel for it and know the kind of things we wanted to achieve. My Pinterest boards of inspiration range from the extremely creative to the wildly expensive, so I’ve had to reign in some of my thoughts and get down to business. Sometimes the hardest part is just starting for fear you may make the wrong decision and wake up wishing you’d chosen an entirely different new roof. (We had that done last week) But having a clear vision of what I want to achieve in the bigger picture, has helped me make critical decisions along the way and not get to tied up in the detail. I say that now though, and we are only three weeks in.

So back to the sink hole.

In a massive effort to change the lay of our land, we are levelling out a hugely sloped block and creating a new look. We know how all the big ticket items will work, but I’m in the process of designing various garden areas that will work for my personal taste. That taste is a hard one to explain to a garden designer, so in true DIY form, I’m tackling my Mid Century Modern meets Oriental influence, low maintenance garden!

Here are the inspirations floating my boat at present.

Lattice work and breeze block panels, fabulous Japanese gardens and wonderful Stag Horn wall plantings!

Flame Maple trees!

Insanely fabulous sun room area! We had a sunroom with cane chairs and grass matting as a child in the 1970’s and I’ve always wanted one. This may be what I do to our back patio.

The (hard to find) MCM Bullet planter and the easy to grow Monstera. (We also had loads of these growing up)

Bright and colourful vintage garden furniture and accessories.

If you have any Australian suggestions of cool suppliers or resources, please let me know in the comments. I’ll be hunting down even more treasures than I currently have squirrelled away. It is so much harder in Melbourne to find these great pieces than in Queensland for example, and even more so than the vintage treasure trove of the USA.  No doubt I’ll be (over)sharing this whole process with you, but if you enjoy all this eye candy be sure to follow my Pinterest board where the real overload is happening. Oh, and if you know of some great vintage look gumboots I’ll be needing those too!