By 
The strip down the side of the house is the most forgotten space on an Australian block, and it is also the busiest. On a typical lot that narrow side yard is the setback carrying the stormwater line, the water meter, the air-conditioning condenser, the downpipes and the wheelie bin run. Before it can be a side yard garden it has to keep doing all of that, and there is one rule about building near the house wall that catches almost everyone. Explore this space online and you get a photo of a lush green corridor; the inspiration is real, but almost none of it was shot in a strip with a water meter in it.
The 75mm nobody mentions
If your house is a concrete slab on ground, Australian Standard AS 3660.1 requires a 75mm strip of exposed slab edge around the perimeter so termites cannot get in undetected. That inspection zone is roughly one brick high, and covering it is the classic side passage mistake, because this narrow space is exactly where people think, I will just top it up with soil and gravel.
What breaks it: a raised garden bed against the house wall, mulch banked up the render, turf run to the brickwork, or pavers laid to the wall and then gravel spread over the top. Rentokil Australia’s wording covers that last one specifically do not let soil sit above the edge of the slab, “or above pavers over the slab face”.
Two related points. Do not confuse the 75mm with the 50mm figure you will also see; that one is an NCC minimum slab height above impermeable paving that slopes away, and it is not the termite number. And if the house has a suspended timber floor instead, the equivalent sin is burying the subfloor vents and weepholes, cover those and you are trading a garden bed for rising damp.
CSIRO’s bushfire guidance adds the other reason to keep the wall clear: do not store combustible mulches against the house. Keep a clean 75mm gap, run your garden bed a hand’s width off the wall, and you have solved the termite problem and the fire problem in one move.
Where the water goes
Proper drainage is crucial in narrow side yards to prevent pooling water, and this is where a side passage most often fails. The NCC requires surface water to be diverted away from the house 25mm of fall over the first metre for impermeable surfaces in low-rainfall areas, and 50mm over the first metre in every other case. Whatever you lay in that strip has to fall away from the wall, not toward it.
The side passage is also usually where the stormwater line runs, and often where an easement sits. You cannot build over a stormwater easement without a build-over application to the council or the water authority, and that applies to a slab, a retaining wall or a permanent structure, not to a garden bed or loose gravel, which is one reason a planted side passage is easier to approve than a paved one.
For the water itself, you have three options: a spoon drain (a shallow dished channel), a strip or channel drain along the low side, and an ag line slotted subsoil pipe in gravel, which takes the water out of the soil rather than off the surface. In a narrow strip with a fence on one side and a wall on the other, a strip drain at the low end usually does the most work for the money.
One caution on the brief’s advice to ensure proper drainage and maintenance using permeable paving materials. Permeable paving is genuinely good, but the Concrete Masonry Association’s own guidance requires an impermeable membrane under it on reactive clay, which is most of Melbourne, Adelaide and western Sydney. Deliberately soaking water into reactive clay right beside a footing is the exact mechanism AS 2870 is written to prevent. On clay, permeable paving becomes a surface that drains to a pipe, not a soakaway, and it may then stop counting toward your council’s soft-landscaping percentage.
The path, and the width the bin actually needs
A clean pathway should have a minimum width of 3 to 4 feet for comfortable walking, says the brief. That is imperial and American. The Australian numbers, from Gardening Australia, are 700–900mm for one person, about 900mm to get a wheelbarrow through, and 1200mm for a front path.
Then there is the bin. A standard Australian 240-litre wheelie bin is 580mm wide, 730mm deep and 1080mm tall. Wheeled tilted back, it needs about 800mm to be workable and 900–1000mm to be comfortable down a twelve-metre run.
The word doing the work there is clear. A one-metre side passage with a 150mm meter box on the wall and 200mm of shrub leaning off the fence is a 650mm passage. And note the 1080mm bin height a trellis, tap, or hose reel projecting below that will be found by the bin, repeatedly.
The things you must not plant in
Homeowners bury meters constantly. Water Corporation in WA requires 300mm of clear space around a water meter and 1200mm of open air above it, and under the Water Services Regulations 2013 keeping it accessible is your legal responsibility, block it and they can relocate it at your cost or estimate your usage. A gas meter carries a 500mm ignition-source exclusion zone, which rules out putting a garden light or a condenser beside it. Leave the meter box, the tap and the AC unit out of the planting plan before you start.
Surfaces that work in a metre-wide strip
A gravel pathway creates a neat, functional garden path, and use a combination of gravel and pavers for a low-maintenance walking path is sound advice, the pavers give you a firm line to wheel a bin over and the gravel does the rest cheaply. Stepping stone paths can enhance side garden aesthetics, though stepping stone pavers alone are a service path, not a bin run.
Two honest downsides before you order it: loose gravel migrates, and weeds come up through it within a season unless you lay a quality weed mat and top it up. It still beats the alternative, because the lawn will not grow in this much shade and a mown strip of it is the least practical surface in a space with limited space to turn a mower. Some vocabulary: “pea gravel” is the American term, and in Australia you are buying 7mm or 10mm decorative pebbles, river rock or crushed granite. Varying textures in hardscape elements adds depth and interest, and in a strip this narrow that is one of the few design moves available, a strip of pebble beside a run of concrete pavers reads as deliberate. For example, large format pavers on a bed of dark pebble suit a modern house, while brick pavers and a gravel edge suit a traditional one the same materials in a contemporary or period arrangement, at the same price.
Simple timber edging can define beds neatly on a budget, with the caveat that treated pine in ground contact is consumable and hardwood is not. And mulching can transform a neglected side passage cheaply: sugarcane at $15–$20 per cubic metre, hardwood chip at $60–$80, spread 50–75mm deep, just not against the wall.
The plant list, and the country it was written for
Here is where the most narrow side of house landscaping ideas fall over. The standard shade list hostas, astilbes, aucuba, pulmonarias is a British woodland palette, and a shaded Australian side passage is not a British woodland. It is dry shade, which is the hardest condition in gardening.
- Hostas thrive in low-light conditions of shaded areas – in cool and temperate Australia only, and Gardening Australia’s own advice is to grow them in pots to prevent snail and slug attack. That is the national gardening authority quietly telling you not to plant them in the ground.
- Astilbes produce stunning flowers in shaded side borders – Garden Express disqualifies them in one line: they do not tolerate dry soils. The side passage is the driest bed on the property.
- Shade-tolerant shrubs like aucuba thrive in deep shade – this one holds up. Aucuba japonica ‘Gold Dust’ is sold here, reaches 1–2m, and takes full shade. Cool to warm temperate.
- Pulmonarias are low-maintenance perennials for shaded areas – sold in Australia, but as a specialist cool-climate mail-order plant that wants protection from hot afternoon sun and dislikes dry conditions. Not a default.
- Low-maintenance plants like lavender and creeping thyme are suitable for narrow yards – both want full sun. In a shaded passage they will sulk, stretch and die. They belong on the sunny side.
Ferns are excellent for narrow side passages with shade, and the Australian picks are bird’s nest fern, Blechnum, and holly fern, which is Gardening Australia’s dry-shade choice. Plant shade-tolerant ground covers in low-light areas of the side yard: native violet, Dichondra repens, mondo grass, or the Liriope cultivars bred here, Isabella and Just Right both handle heavy shade across the country at about 400–500mm.
The single best plant for this spot is Aspidistra elatior, the cast-iron plant, at 600mm to a metre in full shade with drought-tolerant rhizomes. Add Lomandra Tanika and Dianella Tasred for structure, clivias for flower, and bromeliads if you are frost-free, they hold their own water. The plant combinations that work here are all the same shape: one strappy plant, one broad-leaf, one groundcover, repeated. All of them hold their form through winter, which matters in a strip you see from the kitchen window every day of the year. Native plants require minimal maintenance and are cost-effective, though “natives need no care” is overstated; they need establishment watering like anything else. Drought-tolerant plants reduce maintenance in narrow side yards, which is true and is the right selection principle here.
The rain shadow nobody plans for
A strip beside a wall with an eave overhead gets almost no rain. Gardening Australia has covered this exact site repeatedly, the eaves and walls keep off a lot of the rainfall, and almost no rain gets onto a bed next to the house. Irrigation in a side passage is effectively mandatory, not optional. Budget for a dripline before you buy plants. It is the difference between a bed that limps along and one that actually has some life in it.
Two cheap ways to fill it: seed-grown ground covers are cost-effective for side gardens, and dividing existing plants reduces landscaping costs significantly. Clivias, liriope and dianella all divide readily, so one established clump from elsewhere in the garden can plant several metres of bed for nothing.
Screening, climbers and the bamboo problem
Bamboo is a popular choice for container privacy screens, and this needs a warning. Running bamboo, the Phyllostachys species, is naturalised across NSW and, in Hornsby Shire Council’s words, can damage paved areas, fences and underground pipes. Burke’s Backyard puts the consequence plainly: you may be liable for the damage even though the negligence may not have been deliberate. It is legal to plant. It is a terrible idea against a shared fence and a stormwater line. If you want the look, plant a clumping species Bambusa textilis ‘Gracilis’ at 6–8m, Bambusa multiplex ‘Goldstripe’ at 3–6m and know that a pot slows a running bamboo rather than stopping it.
Screens that stay narrow
Fast-growing shrubs provide effective privacy screens quickly, and the narrow ones are what you want: Straight and Narrow Syzygium at 1–1.5m wide, or Thin Red Photinia at only 600mm wide and 3–4m tall. Avoid Ficus screens entirely, invasive roots that crack water pipes and damage foundations, which in a one-metre strip over the stormwater line is asking for it.
Climbing plants can enhance privacy fences beautifully, and a privacy fence can be softened with climbing roses except climbing roses need at least six hours of direct sun a day, which a shaded passage does not have. Star jasmine is the all-round answer here: full sun or partial shade, 1.2–3m, and listed as fire retardant by the SA CFS. Skip English ivy, a declared weed in the ACT and WA, and skip creeping fig, which does significant damage to walls and gutters and is near-impossible to remove.
Espalier fruit trees grow flat against walls in small spaces and espalier fruit trees create privacy and visual interest both true, and both need the sunny wall. In the southern hemisphere that is the north-facing one, so espalier belongs on the other side of the house from the shaded passage this article is about.
Vertical gardens, pots and pallets
Vertical gardens maximize planting space in narrow passages, and vertical gardens maximize planting space in narrow areas, the logic is right, the budget usually is not. Green walls can be made from wood, metal, or concrete, and an Australian green wall runs about $300 per square metre DIY to $2,000 professionally installed, with $200–$2,000 a month in maintenance. University of Melbourne research is blunt that irrigation is essential for plant survival in these systems. Vertical gardens can include ferns, succulents, and herbs, not in the same wall, they cannot. Ferns want constant moisture, succulents want to dry out, and a shaded passage will not grow herbs at all.
Pallet gardens use repurposed wood for vertical planting, and if you do this, read the stamp. Australian guidance on ISPM 15 marking is that HT means heat-treated and safe; MB means methyl bromide fumigated and if there is no stamp at all, do not use it.
Container gardens add greenery without ground preparation, which is the honest budget answer for a passage with a slab edge you must not bury. Use tall potted planters to introduce flexible greenery along pathways, choose containers big enough to hold water through an Australian summer, and accept daily watering in January unless they are self-watering.
Fences, mirrors and the seating question
A vertical garden, pergola or trellis on a shared boundary fence is a conversation with the neighbours before it is a design decision, dividing fences legislation makes the fence joint property in every state. Structurally, a Colorbond or paling fence is not built to carry a saturated green wall, which can run to a few hundred kilograms on a modest panel. Build it freestanding on its own posts.
Incorporate a reflective surface like mirrors to create an illusion of more space, this is an aesthetic idea rather than a measurable one, and the only Australian-authored source I could find on garden mirrors is in favour of them. Outdoors, be aware they attract bird strikes and can concentrate sun onto plants, so site one where it reflects greenery rather than sky. The same caution applies to creating a water feature in this strip: a wall-mounted spout looks good and sounds better, but it is one more thing needing power, water and cleaning in the passage you also wheel the bin down.
Compact seating arrangements can be integrated without crowding the space is the one claim on the list I would simply not attempt at 1–1.5m wide. You will lose the bin run. Enhancing a narrow side yard requires a balance of clear pathways and vertical plantings, and that balance is the whole design, path down the middle, planting up the fence.
Low-voltage path lights improve nighttime safety and ambiance, lighting along pathways improves safety and security, and lighting can create a more inviting atmosphere in narrow spaces. A plug-in 12V or 24V garden lighting kit is legal for a homeowner to install in Australia; anything at 240V, including the outdoor power point it plugs into, is licensed electrician work. Aim the light down the path, not at the fence, so it does not spill into the neighbour’s bedroom.
Where to start
Walk the strip with a tape and mark three things: the slab edge, the fall, and the clear width once the meter box and the AC unit are counted. That tells you whether you are landscaping a garden or a service path with plants in it, and on most Australian blocks it is the second one, which is fine. Get the 75mm gap, the fall away from the wall and the 800mm of clear passage right, then plant Aspidistra, liriope and star jasmine and put a dripline under the mulch. It is the cheapest transformation available on an Australian block, and the only part that is expensive to get wrong is the part nobody photographs.
