Softened Simplicity – Queens Park Courtyard Garden by Outdoor Establishments

Imagined from a place of simplicity, Queens Park Courtyard Garden is a tranquil escape. Outdoor Establishments has combined a light and textural palette to create the illusion of expanded area in this compact and cleverly curated garden, where a series of outdoor living spaces offer an enviable urban respite.

Nestled into the rear yard of an established residence in Sydney’s inner suburbs, the garden of the same name elevates the urban condition through a softening and simplifying of its comprising parts. In an effort to ensure every millimetre was used to its full potential, the garden sees select materiality and finishes used to ensure an expanded sense of space is created. Never has the need for greenspace and lushly landscaped spaces been greater nor in such short supply, particularly within the inner workings of cities, and ensuring that these spaces are considered and curated in such a way as to both respond to their owners and encourage interaction is key. Outdoor Establishments combines an intuitive understanding of outdoor space with a curated collection of softening green elements to encourage movement through the spaces and create places to stop and contemplate.

Designed and built by Outdoor Establishments, Queens Park Courtyard Garden covers a mere 50sqm – with a length of 10m and width of 5m. The subsequent masterplanning therefore needed to allow for a means to break up the whole and create varying spaces in which to gather and pause. The solution sees integrated and custom seating elements built into the edging walls and structural elements, where a planter transitions into a bench, for example, and they subsequently support one another. Such was the scale of the garden that an acute attention to detail and the refinement of tactile elements that were readily engaged with needed to be considered from the beginning. From a base of simplicity, a bold and free flowing plan emerged on site, connecting each of the spaces together.

The inherent playfulness seen in the curves and cascading plants offers a sense of balance and relief from the more structured and formal elements.

The inherent playfulness seen in the curves and cascading plants offers a sense of balance and relief from the more structured and formal elements. The use of crisp and linear concrete against the soft and tumbling plants further emphasises this equilibrium created, and neatly brings together the built and the natural in a way that feels organic and unforced, conjuring a natural coexistence. Key to the success of the space as a whole is the feeling of uncluttered simplicity, and the careful integration of certain elements and seating means an easy cross-over of functionality and space.

From a base of simplicity, a bold and free flowing plan emerged on site, connecting each of the spaces together.

Queens Park Courtyard Garden beautifully navigates its tight constraints and proposes itself as a neatly and carefully curated private sanctuary for its owners and guests. Outdoor Establishments has combined natural textures and muted warmth to create an outdoor space of enduring relevance.