Skip to content
Overhead view of a compact courtyard with timber dining table sandstone wall and slatted bench seating

In the Press

The Daily Telegraph

March 2019 · Surry Hills

Cover of The Daily Telegraph Home lift-out, March 2019, on small courtyard living
As featured in The Daily Telegraph

Featured in The Daily Telegraph’s Home section in March 2019, our Surry Hills courtyard shows how much a small, hemmed-in space can deliver with the right design. Writing for the paper, Robyn Willis called it “punching above its weight.”

The courtyard was just 8m by 8m, boxed in by five-metre walls on all three sides, with no access except through the living room. We stripped it right back, taking out the old pavers to start from a clean canvas, then divided the space into two subtly different zones: stone paving for a lounge area on one side and a smooth concrete slab for the dining table on the other.

The hero is the old sandstone wall, once the side of a neighbouring warehouse. It had heaps of character, and we could see it would light up beautifully at night, so rather than leave three plain walls that might have felt like a prison yard, we made that heritage stone the courtyard’s feature, uplit to glow after dark.

It is proof that a compact, awkward site is no barrier to a garden that feels generous and considered.

The feature · as it ran in print