One of the reasons we chose to put a large single-storey house on a relatively small block was to seriously reduce garden maintenance. I love gardening, and put a lot of blood, sweat and tears into our old garden, but these days simply do not have the time to spare. And then there's the lack of water....
So our landscaping plans for the new place do not include a single blade of grass. Lawn is way too high maintenance for our liking and a huge waste of precious water. Our kids are mostly past the age of needing lots of play space, and if they do, there's plenty of parkland nearby.
I'd really like to continue our "no lawn" policy through to the nature strip, so we can retire the old Rover mower completely, but will have to look into it. There are developer design guidelines to consider, and also council by-laws.
Call me cynical, but as far as I can tell, the main issue the council has with anything other than grass on nature strips is the risk of someone tripping over a shrub or groundcover on what is legally their property, and sueing them. I know they were quick off the mark to issue a notice if we allowed a 5cm tendril of some plant to creep onto the footpath at our old place....
Anyway, I wonder how these nature strip plantings, installed by a developer around public spaces, get past the council's paranoia?
I'd love to do something like this out the front of our place.