In this highly illustrated book, which features restrained contemporary design as a canvas for the superb images, Michael Bates has collected, written and shot approx. 20 garden case studies, supplying the images, working with leading garden photographer Jason Busch. There s an exciting crop of Australian garden designers who have a unique style and approach to creating landscapes. Responding to clients who are no longer content with the standard backyard, they design destination spaces: outdoor lounge rooms, open-air kitchens, pizza ovens, chill-out zones, teenage hangouts, resort-style pool cabanas, even outdoor bathrooms. Spaces where children can connect with nature through tree-houses, veggie patches and fantasy gardens. We ve come a long way from the lone lemon tree and hills hoist in our backyards.The relationship between architecture and garden is paramount, and tin their work these designers connect them to become one place, creating a seamless flow of levels and materials between indoor and outdoor. For most of the year in many parts of Australia it s possible to leave doors open to the garden and weather, or to remove walls altogether. These designers inject life into a garden with moving water, fire pits, pets, friends and family life all having a comfortable place outdoors. Every exterior space is activated, and all the elements work together to set the garden in motion. They ve developed a healthy disregard for old school planting styles. Gardens are invigorated with inter-planting, colour and foliage textures. Natives are mixed with exotics, sub-tropicals with sub-temperates, succulents with perennials - you name it. Planting influences can be as far flung as the West Coast of the USA to southern Europe and everything in between. The new rules are that there are no rules - just these clear thinking designers imaginations. Green elements are seen as structural features of a design. Walls become a cascade of plants. Lawns are re-imagined by contouring them as sculptural elements in the composition instead of a traditional rectangular lawn with perimeter planting - never big enough for some imaginary family cricket match.