By Standfast Tree Services — Northern Beaches & North Shore Arborists since 1979
Sydney native garden history took a quiet turn in the 1950s and 60s, when home owners began questioning their relationship with the local landscape. After decades of English species, introduced specimen trees from around the world and ornamental exotics, something was quietly changing in Australian gardens. It was gradual, almost tentative but it would eventually transform the way Sydneysiders thought about the trees they wanted to surround themselves with.
At Standfast Tree Services, we’ve been working in gardens across the Northern Beaches and North Shore since 1979. The mature trees we encounter today in older established gardens often date back to this era and they reflect a moment of genuine transition in Australian garden history.
Still Looking to England for inspiration
It’s important to recognise that the majority of Sydney’s residential gardens in the 1950s and early 60s still followed the traditions of previous decades. English influence on planting remained the dominant style — formal hedging, ornamental conifers, and exotic shade trees such as liquidambars were still the norm in most suburban gardens across the North Shore and Northern Beaches.
The post-war housing boom was in full swing, and new suburban gardens were being established at a rapid pace. Most homeowners wanted trees that were familiar, symmetrical and sometimes with beautiful flowers. Australian native trees still didn’t fit that description in the eyes of most gardeners.
A New Voice Emerges
But a quiet revolution was brewing. Pioneering figures like landscape designer Edna Walling began championing Australian native plants and a more naturalistic bush garden style. Walling argued passionately that Australian gardens should reflect the Australian landscape and not copy the English countryside transplanted to the other side of the world.
Her influence was significant, particularly among mould-brealing homeowners and garden designers who felt a genuine connection to the bush. The idea that a garden could be beautiful precisely because it belonged to this place with its distinctive light, climate and its unique flora was genuinely radical at the time.
The 1950s and 60s also saw growing interest in Australian botanical research and a deeper understanding of native species. Organisations like the Australian Plants Society began to champion natives not just for their beauty but for their ecological value, their ability to support local wildlife, conserve water and thrive in the conditions that exotic species often struggled with.
What This Looks Like in Sydney Gardens Today
The trees planted by early native garden enthusiasts in the 1950s and 60s are now, in many cases, magnificent mature specimens. A banksia or eucalyptus planted sixty or seventy years ago by a homeowner on the Northern Beaches may today be home to possums, microbats, kookaburras and a host of other wildlife.
At Standfast we approach these trees with enormous respect. They were planted by people who genuinely loved the Australian bush and they’ve had decades to become valuable habitat to wildlife that cannot survive without them. Before any work is undertaken on a mature native tree of this age, a thorough assessment is essential.
If the 1950s and 60s were not the decades when natives truly took over Sydney’s gardens it was the time when the conversation changed and that conversation would lead directly to the revolution of the following decade.
Coming Next in the Series
In the next post we look at the 1970s — the decade when Australian native trees finally became genuinely fashionable in Sydney residential gardens, and the bush garden movement arrived in full force.
At Standfast Tree Services we’ve been caring for trees and the people who own them across the Northern Beaches and North Shore since 1979. If you have mature trees in your garden that you’d like assessed or advice on, we’re always happy to help.
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Standfast Tree Services — Professional arboricultural services, Northern Beaches & North Shore since 1979.