We love working with sandstone and incorporating this natural stone into our landscape designs. Its unique textures, patterns and colours contrast spectacularly with a garden’s green hues, and what’s more, it’s quintessentially Sydney.
Aside from its stunning aesthetics, sandstone is a strong and durable material and is ideal for creating retaining walls, garden edging, façade cladding, pool surrounds, terraces, pathways, finished capping and stepping, to name but a few.
We source most of our sandstone from Sydney’s Gosford Quarries. Due to the quarry’s proximity to our project sites across the city’s Eastern Suburbs, North Shore and Northern Beaches, the carbon footprint from transportation is relatively low. Furthermore, as a natural material which is extracted from the ground, sandstone only requires a fraction of the energy in comparison to what is required to produce brick, concrete and other manufactured stones.
Sandstone lends itself well to be cut in a variety of ways which can either enhance or downplay its natural patterns. Different cuts can be used across various finishes to enhance a design for example, Diamond Sawn gives a smooth, sleek and elegant finish whereas Rock Faced evokes a more traditional and timeless look. Below are some of our favourite cuts and finishes of sandstone and how we have incorporated them into areas of our garden designs.
Diamond Sawn
This smooth-faced style is versatile as it is comfortably used in a more modern and contemporary cut (as well as classic, traditional designs) which is used both inside such as in bathrooms and around fireplaces, as well as on exterior surfaces including cladding and paving for outdoor terraces.
Split Faced Random Ashlar Wall Cladding
Split by hand and machine, Split Faced Random Ashlar sandstone walling is irregular in size and shape, it has a texture to its surface and edges giving a random look. A wonderful cut used in both exterior (and interior) finishes to add texture to a formal landscape design.
Split Faced Random Ashlar wall cladding sandstone was used in our Artarmon project as cladding and capping to retaining walls and a feature blade wall to complement this formal Mediterranean style design.
Bull Nose Coping
The perfect finish for stairs as seen here in the design of our Lower North Shore project. Bull Nose is a classical finish easily suited for step treads, and a favourite for coping around swimming pools, as it has a softer edge making it more user friendly.
Rock Faced Cladding
Rock Faced sandstone is often used in cladding, as seen here in our project based in Beauty Point. It creates a formal finish to this tropical garden and adds a level of texture to the design, whilst contrasting against the smooth Diamond Sawn wall capping.
What do you love about Sydney sandstone? Would you include it in your landscape?
To find out more about our landscape design projects please click here.
Sandstone: Gosford Quarries
Planting: Alpine Nurseries
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