Shrinking yields

The demand for housing no doubt remains in crisis, but John Gabriele remembers the saying: 'Never waste a good crisis'.

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The great Australian dream of home ownership still prevails as governments and planners struggle to address the growing demand. One thing that is evidently clear in the development of new urban sub-divisions is the diminishing size of the average urban block. Research conducted by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) indicates the average site area of new houses in Australian capital cities has decreased by 22% - that's a loss of land size by 135 square metres on average over the past 15 years, from 602 square metres to 467 square metres.

Despite the significant reduction in block sizes across all states and territories, the statistics show at least 70% of Australians still choose to live in a detached three-bedroom home with a two-car garage. Unfortunately, with the shrinking block sizes, house floor areas have increased, which means less land available for landscape installations.

Not to be beaten by this shrinking trend of urban greenspace, landscape designers and the nursery industry are tackling the issue head on. Small-space landscape design can be just as impressive and functional as larger open-space installations. Coupled with clever plant selection and the breeding of plant cultivars that are more sympathetic to smallspace design, the limitations of small blocks is being overcome.

One area that has largely gone underutilised, but has in the past decade been the subject of increasing interest, is the urban street verge area.

The verge area is a public space managed by local government authorities (councils) and they've come to realise the potential benefits of allowing verge gardens to be constructed.