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This website describes the planning and construction of a hillside garden over several years. It combines text with hundreds of photographs organised along a timeline. Welcome to my hillside garden.

Bridgetown Hillside Garden is one and a half kilometres from Bridgetown a historical town nestled amongst the hills of the Blackwood River Valley. It contains three types of garden. The top garden is the original Anglo Australian garden a mixture of native and none native plants and lawn. The middle garden is a mixed orchard of fruit and nut trees and berries growing on terraces cut into a steep hillside and pruned using the espalier method. The bottom garden is a nature area containing native trees, shrubs and groundcover plants, a rock pool, bog pond, waterfall, three ponds, connecting waterways, small performance space and sitting areas. My goal is to create an erosion stable, environmentally sustainable, water wise, low maintenance, productive and aesthetically pleasing garden.

Bridgetown Hillside Garden was purchased in early 2010 as two parallel strips of land on two legal titles. The house was on one title and a large shed was on the other. The property went down the side of a large steep hill and the house and shed were at the top of the hill overlooking a valley.

Bridgetown is in the South West of Western Australia, 270 kilometres south of Perth, 94 kilometres south-east of Bunbury and 70 kilometres inland from both the west coast and south coast. It is situated on the Blackwood River and at the intersection of South Western Highway and Brockman Highway. It has a topography that is unique in Western Australia in having a high hills and deep valleys.

The Blackwood River goes past the bottom of Bridgetown Hillside Garden before it winds its way into town. A bend in the river can be seen from the middle garden. The 300 kilometres long Blackwood River is a major catchment in the South West of Western Australia. It arises at the junction of the Arthur River and Balgarup River near Quelarup and travels in a south westerly direction through Bridgetown and Nannup and discharges into the Southern Ocean at Hardy Inlet near Augusta.