Royal Adelaide Show Garden 2025 – ‘Intrinsic’
Modern Australian gardens can be both beautiful and smart. This design entitled ‘intrinsic’ invites us all to make small choices that support the land we call home.
Our 2025 garden showcases a modern Australian landscape, designed for both lifestyle and resilience. It draws from our natural environment with structured planting, warm textures, and purposeful restraint.
At its heart stands a bold, counter-levered timber arbour that creates shelter and a sense of belonging. This architectural gesture is framed by elevated planting, Banksia integrifolia and native frangipani, bringing height, softness, and seasonal rhythm.
Stone paving and handcrafted detailing blur the line between cultivated and wild, drawing the landscape into the home. The planting balances strength and subtlety: Acmena hedging, sculptural clusters of Banksia, Correa and Westringia, with native grasses adding texture and additional foliage, and wild desert flowers threading colour and spontaneity through the ground layer.
This is a small, functional garden, practical and inspiring. A Green Egg smoker and containers of edible natives offer a lifestyle rooted in place, flavour, and climate-aware living. Native plants thrive in our changing conditions, support wildlife, and help regenerate local ecologies.
SHOW PLANTS
Images below in order listed.
Hedge: Acmena firescreen.
Trees: Banksia Integrifolia, Hymenosporum flavum
Plants: Westringia Xena, Correa pink mist, Correa alba coastal pink, Banksia Birdsong spinuloas dwarf x ericifolia golden girl, Lomandra tanika.
Ground cover: Zoysia tenuifolia, Grevillea gin gin gem, Casuarina cousin it, Viola hederacea.
Wildflowers: Spyridium Discovery Bay, Micromyrtus Ciliata Prostrate, Dampiera Trigona Pink, Conostylis Angustifolia, Xerochrysum bracteatum Neilsens gold, Ptilotus Matilda.
Edible Australian plants: Sea parsley Adium prostratum, Midyin Berries Austromyrtus Dulcis, Lemon Myrtle Backhousia citriodora, Muntries Kunzea pomifera.
Distinctive Gardens is led by Rob Cooper with over twenty years experience designing and constructing quality landscapes throughout Adelaide.
Made possible with the help of our collaborators:
