Embracing Nature in Low-to-Mid-Rise Design: Insights from the NSW Housing Pattern Book Landscape Design Guide

Most conversations about the NSW Housing Pattern Book start with the building. Which terrace pattern. Which manor home. Whether the lot is wide enough, deep enough, and in a Low and Mid-Rise (LMR) area. Whether the scheme can be a Complying Development Certificate (CDC) under Part 3BA of the Codes SEPP, or whether it must go to a Development Application (DA).

That is the right first conversation. It is not the last one.

A Pattern Book house is, by design, a nominated drawing set. You buy the pattern, you allocate a planning identification number, and you build that pattern. You do not shift the stair, widen the garage, or “just add a bathroom.” We have made that point in earlier notes on R2 terraces in St Ives and Castle Hill. The building is copy and paste.

The garden is not.

The NSW Housing Pattern Book Landscape Design Guide (July 2025), prepared by Government Architect NSW (GANSW) with Hassell, is the companion document that sits beside those architectural drawings. It is the State’s practical briefing on how Pattern Book housing should meet the ground: trees, deep soil, green cover, front yards, courtyards, side passages, paving, lighting, and climate-specific planting. The indicative site plans that come with a purchased pattern are the starting point for a landscape plan. They are not a finished landscape.

This post is a long practice reading of that guide for landowners, builders, certifiers, and designers working on low-rise Pattern Book schemes — terraces, manor homes, semi-detached dwellings and row homes. It is written from the same place as our other housing notes: what the document actually says, where it bites on a real lot, and how we would design to it.

The edition in front of us is the July 2025 low-rise companion issued with the Pattern Book packs. GANSW has since published a later statewide edition that also covers mid-rise apartments. The numbers and spatial rules below are taken from the July 2025 low-rise guide. Always check the edition that applies to the pattern you are lodging.

Why landscape is the Pattern Book problem nobody prices first

Pattern Book CDC is sold as speed. That is fair. Part 3BA exists so that a tested State design can skip a full merit assessment if the land fits the pattern’s location rules.

Speed does not mean the outdoor spaces look after themselves.

Three things collide on almost every Pattern Book site we test:

1. The building envelope is fixed. Setbacks, building depth, garage location and courtyard positions are already drawn. The landscape has to work inside that leftover geometry, not invent a new one.

2. The land is not a diagram. Established North Shore and Hills lots come with existing trees, cross-fall, sandstone, neighbours’ canopies, service pits, driveways that must not be wider than the garage, and a street character that is defined as much by front yards as by facades. The guide itself says that.

3. The approval documents still have to prove canopy, deep soil and planting. The Pattern Book Design Verification Statement asks an architect or accredited designer, in terms, whether the landscape plan demonstrates the tree planting requirements in the Landscape Guide — canopy cover and deep soil for that pattern. Section 131A of the Environmental Planning and Assessment Regulation 2021 is the legal hook for that statement. A pretty mood board will not carry a CDC.

The guide is careful about its own status. It is not a compliance checklist and not a prescriptive standard. It consolidates guidance and requirements for Pattern Book development. That distinction matters. You cannot treat every diagram as a clause. You also cannot treat landscape as optional decoration once the pattern is purchased.

In practice, we read it as four overlapping jobs:

• meet the Tree Canopy Guide for Low and Mid-Rise Housing numbers that the landscape guide adopts;

• produce a landscape plan a council or certifier can assess with the rest of the Pattern Book package;

• respond to climate, orientation, ecology and topography, rather than copying a Hassell diagram onto the wrong suburb; and

• leave a garden that someone will actually maintain, water, and live in.

If any of those four fails, the Pattern Book advantage starts to evaporate. Either the CDC stalls, or the finished street looks like a volume product with a token tree.

What the guide is, and who it is for

The guide is a companion to the Pattern Book. GANSW and Hassell wrote it for the people who have to make the outdoor spaces work: applicants, architects and landscape architects, builders, council planners and certifiers, and the residents who will plant and look after the gardens afterwards.

Its pitch is simple. Pattern Book development should bring good design into neighbourhoods. Outdoor space is how that design meets the street, the neighbour, and the climate. The stated benefits are the ones every housing debate now uses, and they are still the right ones:

• Flexible layouts that can be adapted rather than cloned.

• Compliant documentation that can meet outdoor space, canopy, deep soil and related council requirements.

• Sustainable gardens that reduce urban heat, absorb stormwater and store carbon.

• Biodiverse planting that restores local ecosystems instead of laying a single species of turf from fence to fence.

• Healthy outdoor rooms with shade, privacy, air and somewhere to sit.

• Public value: local character is made in the front yard as much as on the front facade.

The process the guide describes is the one we already use on custom work, and it is the one Pattern Book applicants skip at their cost:

Start early. Landscape is cheaper as a staged plan than as a variation after the slabs are poured.

Check the local council. Application requirements differ. Some councils want a landscape plan, a planting schedule, materials specifications and technical diagrams. Some want a landscape architect’s report. The State guide helps you hit outdoor space, canopy and deep soil. It does not replace a DCP, a tree permit, or a stormwater specification.

Engage specialists when the work is actually specialist. Complex levels, structures, hydraulics, basement interfaces and significant trees are not DIY. Mid-rise Pattern Book work is even clearer: a landscape professional is expected. Low-rise work still needs one if the site is not a flat, empty rectangle.

Lodge the landscape plan with the planning application. It is part of the Pattern Book package, not a condition to be “resolved later.”

The technical drawing files for a selected pattern — PDF, CAD, technical information, the Design Verification Statement template, and this landscape guide — are what you buy from the Pattern Book website. The indicative site plans in that pack are the base for the landscape plan. Adapt them. Do not pretend they already know your soil, your street trees, or your overland flow path.

How we use the guide against the rest of the Pattern Book system

The guide tells you to use it at every step: pattern selection, planning documentation, detailed design, and construction. That is the correct order. Landscape feasibility belongs in pattern selection, not in week six of documentation.

On a typical SN Architects Pattern Book enquiry, the landscape questions sit immediately after the planning gates:

1. Is Pattern Book even available on this land? Zoning, LMR mapping, heritage, flooding, bushfire, lot geometry, and the pattern’s own location requirements.

2. Which nominated pattern actually fits — Terraces 01 to 04, a manor home, a semi, a row home — without amending the building?

3. What does the leftover ground have to do? Canopy percentage, tree counts in deep soil, deep-soil percentage, protected-tree setbacks under clause 3BA.11, private open space, driveways, bins, tanks, and the street.

4. Which climate zone is the site in, and which planting palette will survive there?

5. Does the Design Verification Statement have something true to say about landscape, or are we about to sign a hope?

If step 3 fails, change pattern or change pathway. Do not keep the architectural pattern and invent a garden that needs a different building.

The guide also points outward, and those outward documents are not optional reading:

• Tree Canopy Guide for Low and Mid-Rise Housing — the source of the canopy, deep-soil and planting-rate table.

• Apartment Design Guide — relevant once communal open space and planting on structure enter the picture.

• Biodiversity in Place, Which Plant Where, Trees Near Me, NSW WeedWise, PlantNET, and council native-planting guides such as the City of Sydney’s Greening Sydney Strategy or the Grow Local Illawarra guides.

• DarkSky principles for outdoor lighting.

Council native and habitat guides still matter on a Pattern Book lot. A State palette is a starting list, not a licence to ignore a local ecological community or a council’s preferred street-tree species.

Tree canopy, deep soil, and the numbers that decide the plan

This is the section that should be on the wall during sketch design.

The low- and mid-rise patterns are drawn to hold trees. The guide’s reasons are not poetic extras. Shade and cooling, privacy and noise, physical and mental health, habitat, and air quality are the performance case for keeping Pattern Book housing from becoming a hardscape product.

Existing trees count. If they can be retained, they contribute to the canopy percentage for the lot. They also give you shade in year one instead of year twelve. On established North Shore lots, retaining a decent tree is often the difference between a landscape plan that works on paper and a street that still looks like itself.

Canopy cover is the land shaded by the overhead spread of branches and leaves, expressed as a percentage of site area. The calculation uses the tree’s anticipated size at maturity, not the nursery pot. That is why a 75-litre tree does not “give” you 50 square metres of canopy on the day it is planted. The plan is a promise about the mature tree.

The guide’s sizing assumptions are:

• Small tree: 6–8 m high, 6 m canopy diameter, about 28 m² of canopy cover.

• Medium tree: 8–12 m high, 8 m canopy diameter, about 50 m² of canopy cover.

• Large tree: 12–18 m high, 12 m canopy diameter, about 113 m² of canopy cover.

Plant trees at a minimum 75-litre size. That is the guide’s balance between cost, handling, day-one impact and establishment. Go larger if the street needs an immediate presence.

At least 50% native trees is recommended. Native, in this document, means originating in Australia. Indigenous means native to that location (and possibly found elsewhere). Endemic means found only there. Exotic means originating outside the location, whether from elsewhere in Australia or overseas. Those definitions matter when a council officer, an ecologist and a nursery catalogue are using the word “native” in three different ways.

The table, restated by housing type

The following is the Pattern Book approach to canopy, tree numbers and deep soil, based on the Tree Canopy Guide for Low and Mid-Rise Housing.

Terraces

• Site under 300 m²: at least 15% canopy; at least one small tree on every lot; at least 15% deep soil.

• 300–600 m²: at least 20% canopy; at least one small tree for every 200 m² or part thereof; at least 20% deep soil.

• Over 600 m²: at least 25% canopy; at least one medium tree for every 225 m² or part thereof; at least 25% deep soil.

Semis (semi-detached)

The same three bands as terraces: 15 / 20 / 25 per cent canopy and deep soil, with the same small-tree and medium-tree rates.

Manor homes

• Under 1,000 m²: at least 15% canopy; at least one medium tree for every 300 m² or part thereof; at least 15% deep soil.

• 1,000–3,000 m²: at least 25% canopy; at least one medium tree for every 200 m² or part thereof; at least 25% deep soil.

• Over 3,000 m²: at least 30% canopy; at least two medium trees or one large tree for every 350 m² or part thereof; at least 30% deep soil.

Row homes

The same three bands as manor homes.

“Or part thereof” is doing real work. A 410 m² terrace lot is not “a bit over 400, so two small trees.” It is two 200 m² parts. Count the remainder. Deep soil is a percentage of site area, not a leftover strip behind the clothesline.

Deep soil, in the glossary, is soil unimpeded by buildings or structures above and below ground, with enough space for trees to grow. A planter over a slab is not deep soil. A thin garden bed over a rainwater tank is not deep soil. A courtyard can contribute if it is genuinely unimpeded. That is one reason the terrace patterns care so much about the internal court.

Soil volume, setbacks, and the trees you already have

Two geometric rules from the outdoor-space chapters should be drawn on every Pattern Book site plan before anyone argues about species:

• Plant trees at least 3 m from the house, so roots and canopy have room.

• Plant trees at least 750 mm from fences.

Soil volume should be about 0.6 times the projected mature canopy spread, so the roots can reach water and nutrients. Connect and consolidate soil between trees rather than parking each specimen in its own isolated pit. Shared root zones and connected canopies are cooler, more stable, and closer to how a real suburban canopy works — including the neighbour’s tree and the street tree.

That last point is design, not accounting. You cannot usually claim the council street tree as your lot’s canopy. You should still place your trees so the canopies read as a street, not as three lollipops.

Protected trees are a separate legal problem. Part 3BA still requires development to sit at least 3 m from each protected tree on the lot and any adjoining lot, measured from the base of the trunk, with limited exceptions for light works such as paths and some fences. The landscape guide wants you to retain trees. The code will not let you build through them. An AQF 5 arborist report belongs in the first week of a Pattern Book feasibility on an established lot, not after the pattern has been purchased.

Green cover is not the same thing as a lawn

Green cover, in this guide, is all planting: turf, trees, shrubs, grasses and ground covers. A lawn can be part of it. A lawn cannot be all of it.

The planting logic is layered:

• Ground covers: roughly 0–200 mm.

• Grasses and strappy plants: 200–400 mm.

• Shrubs: 500–800 mm.

• Trees over that.

Diversity is not a slogan. The guide’s minimums are specific:

• at least 15 different plant species in the garden;

• at least 3 different species from each of shrubs, grasses and ground covers;

• for massed garden beds, around 10 plants per square metre as a working density, with illustrated setouts also at 6 and 12 plants per square metre.

Dense, mixed planting is more stable in heat, pests and drought than a monoculture. It also feeds more than one kind of insect and bird. Food, shelter and habitat connections for native wildlife are a stated aim, not a children’s-book extra. Shallow dishes, bird baths, insect hotels, nest boxes, rock, logs and dense shrubs are listed as the hardware of that habitat.

Permeable surfaces sit inside the same chapter because they are how water reaches those plants. Ground-cover planting, turf, gravel, pebbles and permeable paving are the recommended alternatives to a sealed driveway-and-patio diagram. The benefits are ordinary and measurable: less runoff, less erosion, better soil, groundwater recharge.

Turf and planting percentages by type

These are the green-cover recommendations the guide summarises by dwelling type. They are how you stop a Pattern Book backyard becoming a rectangle of lawn with a clothesline in the corner.

Row homes and manor homes

• Limit turf to backyards.

• Turf no more than 30% of the backyard.

• Planting to cover at least 35% of the backyard.

• Planting to cover at least 40% of communal landscape areas.

Semis

• Turf no more than 15% of the front yard and 35% of the backyard.

• Planting to cover at least 35% of the combined front and backyard areas.

• Internal courtyards: planting to cover at least 40% of the courtyard. Choose plants for the actual solar access. Courtyards are darker than the brochure.

Terraces

• Limit turf to backyards, and no more than 35% of the backyard.

• Planting to cover at least 35% of the combined front and backyard areas.

• Internal courtyards: the same 40% planting cover, with the same solar-access warning.

Read those figures against the canopy table. A terrace CDC that hits GFA and then fills the rear with paving and a 600 mm garden bed along the fence will fail twice: once as a landscape plan, and again as a place to live.

Designing the outdoor rooms the patterns already contain

The Pattern Book designs are not buildings sitting on leftover dirt. They already contain a kit of outdoor spaces: front yards, backyards, side passages, courtyards, and, on some patterns, rooftop terraces and communal gardens. The landscape guide’s job is to make those spaces work as rooms, not as residual setbacks.

Front yards

Front yards do three things at once: they get you to the door, they present the development to the street, and they are the part of the project the neighbourhood will judge for the next forty years.

The guide’s front-yard rules are small, and they are the ones we see missed on the first draft:

• Driveways should be no wider than the associated carport or garage. A 5.5 m crossing to a 3 m door is a streetscape failure dressed up as convenience.

• Screen bin storage from neighbours and the street.

• Once a front fence is over 400 mm, it should be at least 20% transparent.

• Provide a letterbox that is actually reachable from the street.

• Footpaths should be at least 1.2 m wide, with a cross-fall flatter than 1:40.

• Put trees where they shade and cool indoor rooms and habitable outdoor space, and where they give privacy.

• Plant an understorey, not a single specimen in mulch.

• Use permeable surfaces where they can reduce runoff.

Front-yard planting is neighbourhood character. On a Pattern Book terrace row, it is also the only thing that stops four repeated facades reading as a project home street.

Backyards

Rear gardens are the primary outdoor amenity. They should extend the living space, not store the leftover program.

Working rules:

• No more than 40% of the backyard paved or decked.

• At least one hosecock per backyard.

• Boundary fences no higher than 1.8 m, or 1.2 m if masonry.

• Locate trees for shade over play and living space.

• Reuse rainwater for irrigation.

• Build habitat on purpose: flowers and insects for food, shallow water, dense shrubs, rock and logs.

Connected canopy with the neighbour and the street is worth more than an isolated “feature tree” in the middle of a small lawn. Microclimate comes first. A west-facing rear on a Castle Hill lot in January is not the same garden as a south-facing court in St Ives.

Courtyards

Courtyards are the Pattern Book device that brings light and planting into the middle of a deep, narrow plan. Terraces 01 by Carter Williamson is the published example of a leafy internal court doing that work. They can also contribute to deep soil if the ground is genuinely unimpeded.

They fail when someone specifies a sun plant for a shade well, or plants a medium tree in a court that will never hold it. If the court is tight, the guide’s advice is to use other planting types — tree ferns, sculptural specimens — rather than force a canopy tree into a lightwell. Coordinate levels and materials with the building so the indoor-outdoor step is a threshold, not a trip.

Soil volume still applies. A courtyard tree without soil is a temporary decoration.

Side passages

Side passages are where Pattern Book schemes hide the unglamorous life of the house: bins, rainwater tanks, clothes lines, meters, access to the rear. Low light is normal. Plant and pave for that, or the passage becomes a damp service alley that nobody maintains.

Done properly, a side passage is still a garden you see from inside the house. Permeable paving, shade-tolerant ground covers, and enough width to move a bin without destroying the planting are the difference.

Communal landscape

Manor homes and row homes have a shared outdoor life that a single terrace lot does not. The guide treats communal space as both social and practical: gatherings, shared gardens and composting, but also car spaces, washing lines and shared bins.

The design moves that keep communal space from becoming leftover driveway are:

• shade car spaces and other hardstand with trees, including existing canopy;

• put infrastructure in defined places — hoses, storage, clothes lines — so it does not colonise the lawn;

• provide the actual furniture of outdoor life if you are going to claim communal amenity: BBQs, benches, a table;

• leave room for communal gardening, which is how neighbours start speaking to each other;

• plant at least 50% native trees in these shared areas if you can, and connect canopy into surrounding habitat corridors.

Studio Johnston’s Manor Homes 01, with private and communal planting around shared parking, is the image the State is using for a reason. Parking is not allowed to eat the landscape whole.

Three worked layouts: manor home, terrace, semi

Chapters 8 to 10 of the July 2025 guide are not pretty pictures. They are indicative landscape plans, planting schedules and material palettes for the three low-rise types most of our clients ask about. They are licensed to be adapted for planning applications. They are not site-specific approvals.

Manor home: shared life around the parking

The manor-home layout breaks the site into front yard, communal open space, private open space, and the circulation that stitches them: off-street driveway, entry path, side passage, bicycle parking.

The amenities list is a briefing, not a wish list: letterboxes, private and communal clothes lines, a communal outdoor kitchen, water and electricity, drainage, waste, rainwater tanks, compost, plus the habitat kit of feeders, nest boxes, insect hotels, bird baths, and a vegetable garden.

On the indicative plan, private open space is majority planting — on the order of 44% planting, with patio paving around 15% and lawn around 16%. A second private garden sits at about 44% planting, 28% lawn and 19% gravel. A 10,000 litre rainwater tank, wall-mounted clothes lines, enclosed waste, shared BBQs and picnic tables, and a fire booster integrated at the fence are all drawn as if they belong in the first sketch. They do.

The manor-home planting schedule in the guide is written for climate zone 2 (warm humid north coast: Crescent Head to Tweed Heads). Crows ash and native gardenia as trees; lilly pilly, native ginger, ferns, spear lily and guinea flower in the shrub layer; swamp lily, flax lily, mat rush and tussock in the strappy layer. That schedule is a demonstration of density and mix. It is the wrong schedule to photocopy onto a Ku-ring-gai or Hills lot. Use the zone 5 or zone 6 palettes instead, and keep the structure: trees in deep soil, a real shrub layer, massed grasses, ground covers, and enough species to hit the diversity minimums.

Materials are chosen to fight urban heat: light-coloured driveway paving, permeable brick in planting for the car park, creamy-beige paths and patios, light precast tiles in communal areas, breeze-block front fences, white timber at the rear. Shade the hard surfaces. Do not specify dark sealed asphalt in a shared manor-home court and then wonder why nobody sits in it.

Terrace: the court, the side passage, and the thin rear

The terrace layout is the one that decides whether a Pattern Book CDC feels like a house or a corridor. Front yards, perimeter courtyards, side passages and backyards share a very small amount of ground.

The indicative lot shows how tight the arithmetic is. Lawn is a minority — on the published diagram, a little over 18% of that rear. Paving sits around 23.5%. Planting appears both in the rear and as a dedicated courtyard volume. That is the 40% courtyard planting rule made visible.

The terrace planting schedule is written for climate zone 5 — Sydney, Newcastle, Port Macquarie, Kiama. That is SN Architects’ home climate. Spotted gum as the large tree; white correa, scaly phebalium, long-leaf wax flower and coastal rosemary as shrubs; flax lily, Lomandra cultivars and a native fountain grass in the strappy layer; kidney weed, prostrate hop goodenia, guinea flower, coastal geranium and native violet on the ground.

That is a useful Sydney starting kit. It is still only a starting kit. Check provenance against the actual street, the soil, and council’s tree list. A spotted gum is a medium-to-large tree in this palette. It needs the 3 m building offset, the 750 mm fence offset, and a deep-soil patch that is not a leftover metre behind a patio.

Stormwater is the terrace chapter’s other argument. On a small lot you can still get high ground permeability without giving up a usable yard: permeable driveway with planting, pebble edges to paths, stepping stones in gravel in the court, gravel in the outdoor living area. Permeable paving reduces runoff, passively waters the plants beside it, can reduce the size of the stormwater system, and cools by evaporation. On a 12-metre terrace lot, that is not a green extra. It is how the CDC still drains.

The section drawings add two warnings we see ignored. Ensure turf actually gets enough sun, or delete it. Rooftop planting, where a pattern offers it, has to be secured against wind. Loose pots on an exposed terrace are not a landscape plan.

Terraces 03 by Officer Woods and Terraces 04 by Other Architects x NMBW are the published reminders that climate-resilient planting is part of the architecture. The court is not a lightwell with a pot plant. It is a designed microclimate.

Semi-detached: two houses, one street, sandstone underfoot

The semi layout is closer to an ordinary suburban house pair: front yards, side passages, backyards, two driveways, two tanks, two clothes lines. The indicative plan still holds planting in the mid-thirties to forty per cent of the rear, keeps paving in the twenties, and holds lawn under the 35% backyard cap. 5,000 litre tanks sit in the side passages with waste storage. Trees are specified at 75 litres. Footpaths are the 1.2 m minimum. Optional front and dividing fences are drawn at a height that can stay neighbourly.

The published planting schedule for this layout is climate zone 6 — Penrith, the Blue Mountains, Batemans Bay, Bowral, Mudgee. Rough-barked apple and snow-in-summer as trees; hop bush, ruby saltbush, bottlebrush cultivars, native fuchsia and rice flower in the shrubs; flax lily, weeping grass, tussock, kangaroo grass and Lomandra in the strappy layer. That palette is the right conversation for western Sydney and the near hinterland. It is a different garden from a coastal sandstone lot in Castle Cove.

The material story for the semi chapter is deliberately a Sydney story. Local sandstone — colour, texture, low front walls, patio paving — is used as the example of designing with place. Using local materials cuts transport emissions and makes the Pattern Book pair belong to the street instead of to a catalogue. In-situ concrete for a driveway can still sit next to sandstone paving and a low stone front wall. The point is not “everything must be stone.” The point is that a State pattern still has to look like it landed in a particular suburb.

Raised garden beds are shown as the civil answer to slope. Pattern Book buildings do not enjoy being rewritten for fall. Landscape often has to take the level change.

Choosing plants for the climate you are actually in

Chapter 6 is a planting handbook organised by NSW climate zone. The map in the July 2025 guide uses five zones for this purpose:

• Zone 2 — warm humid summer, mild winter. Crescent Head to Tweed Heads.

• Zone 4 — hot dry summer, cool winter. Wagga Wagga, Dubbo, Tamworth, Albury.

• Zone 5 — warm temperate. Sydney, Newcastle, Port Macquarie, Kiama.

• Zone 6 — mild temperate. Penrith, Blue Mountains, Batemans Bay, Bowral, Mudgee.

• Zone 7 — cool temperate. Snowy Valleys, Lithgow, Armidale, Tumut, Goulburn, Orange.

Pick the zone first. A plant that is indigenous in Lismore can be a short-lived curiosity in Orange. The guide’s argument is longevity: species adapted to temperature, rainfall and growing conditions need less intervention and make the development look finished sooner.

Each zone list is grouped the same way — trees, shrubs, grasses and strappy plants, ground covers and scramblers — with botanical name, common name, provenance (indigenous / native / exotic), mature height and spread, typical pot size, planting density, and tree-size category.

A few practice notes from using those lists:

Zone 5 is not “anywhere in Greater Sydney.” Penrith is zone 6 in this guide. A Pattern Book dual occupancy in The Hills and a terrace in Kiama should not share a planting schedule just because both are “Sydney.”

Provenance is a design choice. Indigenous species support local wildlife and landscape character and generally need less water and care. Cultivars (the ‘Katrinus’, ‘Verday’, ‘Cousin It’, ‘Sublime’ names) are in the lists because they are reliable in small gardens. Use them with your eyes open: they are still only as good as the soil and the irrigation.

Pot sizes are part of the specification. Trees at 75 L, shrubs typically in 200 mm pots, grasses and ground covers in 140 mm. Trees in containers larger than 300 mm or 250 L should meet AS 2303:2018. Specifying tubestock for the “trees” to save money is how a canopy plan fails its first summer.

Density numbers are for ordering plants, not for decorating a plan. Nine flax lilies per square metre is a different garden from three. If the schedule says 10 plants per square metre and the quote assumes 4, the biodiversity story in the statement of environmental effects is fiction.

Weed law still applies. Cross-check anything you love in a catalogue against NSW WeedWise. Pattern Book is not an exemption from biosecurity.

For SN Architects’ usual North Shore and northern beaches work, the zone 5 list is the first palette we test: coast banksia, tuckeroo, water gum and spotted gum as the tree conversation; banksia, correa, grevillea, wax flower and westringia in the shrub layer; dianella, lomandra and poa underneath; pigface, kidney weed, hardenbergia, hibbertia, scaevola, warrigal greens and native violet on the ground. Then we edit for soil, salt, shade and the council street-tree list.

Which Plant Where, a local nursery, and a landscape architect who actually plants in that LGA will beat a copied schedule every time.

Materials: permeable paving, heat, and the stuff people trip on

Chapter 7 is the materials handbook. It starts with permeable paving because that is the move that does the most work on a small lot.

Permeable paving is a surface with gaps, pores or voids that let water through instead of sending it to the kerb. On Pattern Book sites it is recommended for footpaths, side passages, utility areas and driveways. Combine it with gravel, pebbles, turf and hardy ground covers. Decomposed granite is listed as a lower-cost alternative to solid paving where it is appropriate.

The illustrated kit is the one we actually specify variations of: concrete paving with gravel infill; steppers in planting; gravel and pebbles in a geogrid; steppers in turf; unit paving with gravel joints; permeable pavers; natural stone in gravel.

Driveways get their own paragraph because they are where permeability usually dies. A permeable driveway can be durable, visually quiet, and more slip-resistant than a steel-trowelled slab. It is also one of the few ways a manor-home or terrace parking court does not become a heat island.

Other material notes from the guide, in the order they affect a specification:

• In-situ concrete: regionally sourced aggregates; recycled aggregate in road base; up to about 30% processed recycled concrete aggregate where it is suitable.

• Brick paving: flat or on edge; mortared or butt-jointed; recycled bricks as the sustainable default.

• Precast concrete: local suppliers, recycled content, proper base and sealing.

• Australian hardwood decking: blackbutt, jarrah, spotted gum, tallowwood; treated timber or steel frames; spacing for movement and drainage; sustainably sourced; recoated as the manufacturer requires. Size the deck for the actual use — dining, sitting, circulation — before you draw it as a default rectangle.

Heat is a materials problem as much as a tree problem. Light-coloured and reflective finishes on driveways and paths, permeable surfaces that hold water, and tree shade over built surfaces are the three moves. Dark, sealed, unshaded paving on a west-facing manor-home court is how you design a place nobody uses after 10 am in February.

Lighting: useful, targeted, warm, and off when it is not needed

Garden lighting is in the landscape guide because it is part of the outdoor room, and because badly aimed light is now understood as a habitat and amenity problem.

Integrate it early. Conceal conduits. Use a licensed electrician. Layer path lights, step lights, wall lights, timed security lights and, where they are justified, festoon or downlights. Do not default to uplighting trees. The guide is explicit: uplighting disrupts roosting, foraging and migration.

The dark sky principles it adopts are the ones we write into specifications:

1. Useful — every light has a purpose, including for wildlife.

2. Targeted — shielded, aimed down, no spill.

3. Low level — the least light that works, watching for upward bounce off pale paving.

4. Controlled — timers, daylight sensors, motion sensors.

5. Warm coloured — limit blue-violet light.

Solar fittings are fine if they actually see the sun. A solar path light under a dense evergreen is a dead fitting within a year.

Lighting spill into a neighbour’s habitable room or private open space is also how you manufacture objections. Pattern Book CDC is not a social licence to floodlight a shared side boundary.

What this guide does not do

A clear reading of the landscape guide is as useful as the plant lists.

It does not rewrite the building. If the pattern does not fit the land, landscape cannot save it. Buy a different pattern, or go to a DA.

It does not replace the Codes SEPP. Landscaped area, private open space, tree setbacks, earthworks, drainage and CDC conditions still sit in Part 3BA and the schedules. The guide helps you design to those standards. It does not vary them.

It does not replace the DCP, a tree permit, or an arborist. “The Pattern Book has a landscape guide” is not an argument for removing a significant tree, ignoring a heritage garden setting, or skipping a council landscape referral on a DA.

It does not let you borrow DA landscape bonuses into a CDC, or CDC speed into a DA that needed a different garden. We keep making this point about FSR, lot size and height. It is true of deep soil as well.

It does not guarantee that a copied Hassell diagram will be certified. The diagrams are typical. Your lot has a slope, a sewer, a neighbour’s pool fence, and a paperbark that predates the Pattern Book.

It does not make turf a planning strategy. The percentages are caps, not targets. If the backyard is a south-facing well, plant it as a shade garden and stop pretending it is a lawn.

It is also not a substitute for maintenance. The healthiest palette in zone 5 will fail if nobody waters it for two summers. Pattern Book purchasers should price establishment irrigation and a defects-period landscape maintenance clause the same way they price waterproofing.

How SN Architects would use this on a live Pattern Book job

The order of work does not change. The landscape guide gives us a shared language with the certifier and the council.

1. Confirm the pathway. Pattern Book CDC, Part 3B CDC, or DA. Landscape effort follows the pathway. A Pattern Book CDC needs a plan that supports the Design Verification Statement. A DA may need more, not less, if the DCP is heavier than the State guide.

2. Confirm the pattern before you draw the garden. Walk the location requirements. If Terraces 01’s court and garage do not fit, Terraces 04 will not be rescued by lomandra.

3. Put existing trees on the first survey. Trunk locations, canopy spread, species, and the 3 m protected-tree setback. Decide retain or pathway-change before paying for a pattern.

4. Calculate canopy and deep soil as a spreadsheet, then as a plan. Site area, the correct band for that housing type, tree counts “or part thereof,” mature canopy areas using the 28 / 50 / 113 m² assumptions, deep-soil percentage and minimum dimension. If the numbers only work by counting a tree that will not fit, the design is wrong.

5. Design the outdoor rooms at the same time as the services. Tanks, bins, clothes lines, meters, boosters, hose cocks, overflow paths. The guide keeps repeating this because that is where landscape plans die.

6. Pick the climate zone and write a real schedule. Fifteen species minimum, three from each layer, densities that can be procured, 75-litre trees, 50% native trees if the site will take them. Edit for soil and shade.

7. Specify permeable paving where the driveway and the court would otherwise seal the lot. Then give the civil engineer that surface, so the MUSIC model and the landscape plan describe the same project.

8. Draw fences, transparency, letterboxes and the 1.2 m path. Streetscape is a CDC assessment issue even when the building is a State pattern.

9. Write the Design Verification Statement from the drawings, not the other way around. The landscape paragraph should name the canopy percentage, the deep-soil percentage, the tree sizes, and how the plan follows the guide. If you cannot fill that box honestly, you are not ready to lodge.

10. Price establishment. Pattern Book construction programs are tight. Trees that arrive on the last Friday and are left in pots over Christmas are not canopy.

For terrace work in Ku-ring-gai, where a custom Part 3B CDC is often blocked by the LEP lot-size rule and Pattern Book is the remaining fast-track, this landscape work is not optional polish. It is a large part of what a certifier and a neighbour will actually see.

For manor homes and semis, it is how shared parking and two driveways fail or succeed as a street.

What to do if you are considering a Pattern Book site

If you already own a lot that might take a Pattern Book terrace, manor home or semi, do not buy the pattern the same week you see the render.

Work through the site in this order:

1. Planning gates: zone, LMR, exclusions, lot geometry, pattern location rules.

2. Trees and levels: what must stay, what the 3 m setback does to the envelope, where the fall goes.

3. Pathway: Pattern Book CDC, other CDC, or DA.

4. Landscape arithmetic: canopy, deep soil, planting cover, turf caps, paving caps.

5. Climate and character: zone 5 versus zone 6, sandstone versus clay, the actual street.

6. Only then, pattern purchase, Design Verification Statement, and lodgement.

If you are comparing a Pattern Book CDC with a custom DA, include landscape in the comparison. A DA can sometimes keep a better tree, a better court, or a garden that matches a difficult lot. A Pattern Book CDC can be faster, but only if the leftover ground can still do the work this guide describes.

SN Architects works at the intersection of State housing policy, the Codes SEPP, local LEPs, and buildings that can actually be certified. Pattern Book feasibility, for us, includes the garden. The Landscape Design Guide is the document we use to make that concrete — not as a picture book, and not as a substitute for the code.

Talk to SN Architects about your Pattern Book site

If you are looking at a terrace, manor home, semi or row-home pattern, or you have been told Pattern Book is the way to get a CDC on an LMR lot, it is worth a proper landscape-and-pathway review before you purchase a pattern or redraw a garden around a building that cannot move.

We can help you:

• Test whether a nominated Pattern Book design actually fits the land, including trees, fall and street presentation

• Calculate canopy, deep soil and planting cover against the Landscape Design Guide and the Tree Canopy Guide

• Prepare the landscape plan, planting schedule and Design Verification Statement material a certifier can use

• Compare Pattern Book CDC against a custom DA where the lot, the trees or the garden need more room than the pattern allows

• Coordinate the building, the civil design and the outdoor rooms so the driveway, the court and the rear garden are one project

Contact SN Architects to discuss your site.

Get in touch:

T: (02) 7229 1915M: 0405 242 821E: info@snarchitects.com.auW: www.snarchitects.com.auA: 12E Denawen Avenue, Castle Cove, NSW 2069

Keywords: NSW Housing Pattern Book, Landscape Design Guide July 2025, Pattern Book CDC, Part 3BA Codes SEPP, tree canopy, deep soil, green cover, terrace housing, manor homes, semi-detached, climate zone 5 Sydney, permeable paving, Design Verification Statement, GANSW, Hassell, SN Architects

Disclaimer

This article is general information only. It is based on the NSW Department of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure / Government Architect NSW publication NSW Housing Pattern Book Landscape Design Guide (July 2025), prepared with Hassell, as understood at the time of writing, together with related Pattern Book and complying-development settings including Part 3BA of State Environmental Planning Policy (Exempt and Complying Development Codes) 2008 and the Design Verification Statement requirements in the Environmental Planning and Assessment Regulation 2021.

The Landscape Design Guide is a companion to the Pattern Book. It is not a planning instrument, not a CDC, and not a site-specific approval. The Guide itself states that it is not a compliance checklist or prescriptive standard. A later edition of the Guide has been issued; numerical standards, pattern lists, climate palettes and documentation requirements can change.

Department material in the Guide is generally licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0. Third-party intellectual property, including some photographs, illustrations, drawings and logos, is not covered by that licence. This article is an independent practice commentary by SN Architects. It is not an official GANSW or Department publication.

This article is not planning, legal, certification, landscape-architectural, arboricultural, horticultural, bushfire, flood, stormwater or construction advice, and it does not determine permissibility or CDC eligibility for any property. Pattern Book and landscape eligibility always depend on the facts of the land, the pattern purchased, the instruments and guides in force on the day an application is made, and advice from suitably qualified professionals, including registered architects, landscape architects, town planners, registered certifiers, arborists and specialist consultants where relevant.

Nothing in this article should be read as confirmation that any Pattern Book development, landscape plan, tree removal, species selection or CDC would be approved on any particular site.

You should not act on this article alone. For advice about your own site, contact SN Architects.