Great Southern Turf & Landscaping
“Building outdoor spaces that make memories — Est. 1987, Kalgan, Western Australia”
Winter has a habit of sending everyone indoors, but some of the best evenings of the year happen outside.
Picture family and friends gathered around a crackling firepit, warm drinks in hand, wrapped in blankets while your garden glows softly around you. A thoughtfully designed backyard doesn’t disappear in winter, it becomes one of the most inviting places at home.
This month we’re sharing practical ideas, seasonal inspiration and expert advice to help you create an outdoor space you’ll enjoy all winter and for many winters to come.
3 Changes That Make Every Backyard More Inviting A firepit isn't just another backyard feature — it's where people naturally gather. By designing seating, paving, retaining walls and planting around your firepit, you create an outdoor room that encourages longer conversations, relaxed evenings and year-round entertaining. A strategically designed retaining wall around your firepit makes the space feel warmer and helps buffer Albany's cold winter winds. Trending: the "sunken firepit" with limestone walls built around it. Setting the pit and seating below ground creates an intimate, sheltered gathering space, and natural limestone blocks blend gracefully into the garden. Natural stone, timber and exposed-aggregate paving bring warmth and character to every landscape. Combined with evergreen planting, these materials create a backyard that feels welcoming throughout every season. Trending: 'crazy paving'. Using irregular, mixed-format stone pieces (like Cream Travertine Crazy Paving) create a relaxed, flowing surface for paths and patios. By combining evergreen planting, sheltered entertaining areas and practical outdoor spaces, your backyard becomes somewhere you'll enjoy all year, not just when the weather is warm. One of the simplest ways to get there is layered planting. Build a garden in tiers, from tall canopy trees and screening shrubs down to mid-height perennials and low ground covers. Each layer does a job: the upper storeys give structure and shelter through winter, while the levels beneath fill gaps, suppress weeds and keep the beds looking full even when little is in flower. In the next section we'll also focus on our plant for the month - a great winter addition!Winter By Design
Build Around the Firepit
Add Texture with Natural Materials
Design for Every Season
Plant of The Month
The Winter Flowering Native Every Garden Should Consider
If you're looking for a hardy shrub that thrives in Albany's coastal climate, Correa alba deserves a place on your shortlist.
This beautiful Australian native produces delicate white flowers throughout winter, bringing colour to the garden when many other plants are dormant. It also attracts native birds, tolerates coastal winds and requires very little maintenance once established.
Why We Love It
A Pioneer Soil Binder: Because of its dense root network and low-spreading habit, landscape managers routinely use Correa alba for sand dune stabilisation and coastline erosion control along Australian shores.
When the days get colder, plants aren't giving up — they're conserving. Falling light and temperature trigger the hormone abscisic acid, which tells deciduous plants to pull nutrients back from their leaves, drop them, and slow their metabolism to a near-standstill until spring.
Soil temperature below which many roots slow, but rarely stop, growing
"Chill hours" some fruit trees need below 7°C to flower well in spring
Dormant plants drink far less — a key reason winter overwatering does harm
That "chill requirement" is why some varieties fruit beautifully in Albany's cool winters but struggle further north. Sweet cherries and many apple varieties are good examples. Choosing plants matched to your local chill is half the battle won.
A teaspoon of healthy garden soil holds more living organisms than there are people on Earth. They slow in the cold, but the biology keeps working — which is why winter is one of the best times to feed the soil rather than the plants.
Soil bacteria and fungi remain active above about 5°C, slowly breaking down compost and organic matter into nutrients ready and waiting for the spring flush of growth.
Earthworms follow the warmth downward but keep aerating and enriching soil through mild winters. Mulch keeps the surface habitable so they stay closer to your beds.
"Winter's a good time to dig the beds over and turn the soil."
Working wet winter soil crushes its structure and the air pockets roots need. Lay compost and mulch on top instead and let the worms do the digging for you.
Heavy winter rain can leach nutrients and waterlog beds. Good drainage and a protective mulch layer are the difference between soil that's ready in spring and soil that's sour and compacted.
A firepit warms you mostly through radiant heat — infrared energy that travels in straight lines and warms whatever it hits directly, rather than heating the air around it. That's why the side facing the fire glows warm while your back stays cold: radiant heat doesn't wrap around you.
Typical flame temperatures in an open wood fire
Moisture content of well-seasoned wood — it burns hotter and cleaner
Dense hardwoods like jarrah & marri burn far longer than softwoods
A retaining wall built around a firepit reflects radiant heat back toward you and blocks the wind. With circular seating, retaining walls, and a bit of shelter from the prevailing wind turn a firepit from a nice feature into the warmest seat in the garden — exactly what we mean by building around the fire.
Frost forms on clear, still nights when surfaces radiate their heat to the open sky and cool below freezing. Water vapour then deposits directly as ice crystals. Cold air is heavier than warm air, so it sinks, which is why low spots become "frost pockets" while a slope stays clear.
Damage happens when water inside a plant's cells freezes and expands, rupturing the cell walls. Tender new growth has the highest water content and the least protection.
Cold-hardy plants move water out of their cells and flood them with sugars and proteins that lower the freezing point — a built-in cryoprotectant that "hardens" them off gradually.
"Watering before a frost freezes and kills the plant."
Moist soil holds and releases far more heat overnight than dry soil. Watering in the afternoon before a frosty night actually helps protect roots.
Albany's coastal air keeps hard frosts infrequent, but inland and low-lying blocks can still catch them. Cover tender plants at dusk to trap radiated warmth, and hold off pruning soft growth until the cold snaps have passed.
$500 Off
Choose from $500 worth of garden lighting, reticulation or lawn care products and services when you purchase a landscaping or turf installation package of $3,500 or more.
Take advantage of the cooler weather by completing these simple jobs before spring arrives.
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