Finding Inspiration: Bali Themed Backyard

If the sight of your barren backyard has long bored you, how about trying something totally different? Take inspiration from your last vacation and transform the patch of land behind your home into a Balinese themed backyard. Tranquil in colours, affordable and easy to maintain, a Bali themed backyard can provide you and your family with a peaceful little haven.

Photo credits: Flickr

Finding inspiration

If you have been to Bali, get your travel pictures out and remind yourself of the gardens surrounding your hotel and the beautiful temples you visited – what were the most prominent features?

Public libraries have a wealth of gardening books available, where you can find examples of Balinese gardens, but don’t forget to look up Bali’s temples for here you will find even more inspiration.

A word of warning, though: you want to convey the essence of an oriental garden without creating a theme park full of elephant and Buddha sculptures. Go online and find photographs of Bali-themed gardens and read a little about Indonesia’s culture and heritage, and you’ll soon come up with a simple but effective scheme.

What to include in your shopping list

To create your Balinese backyard, you should draw up a plan that reflects what you want to use the space for. Do you want to wander among your plants or sit down with a drink and a good book?

Depending on the size of your backyard, you could include a Balinese gazebo with seating. Assuming you have a small urban patch of land, here is a simpler solution:

• timber decking
• oriental plants
• bamboo fencing or bamboo screens
• Two thatched bamboo parasols
• Bali stonework plant pots, pedestals, lanterns, hand-carved statues
• preferably water features that won’t need plumbing; you could opt for hand-carved limestone water walls

Include a seating area with a couple of thatched bamboo parasol for shade. Balinese gardens often feature terraces and miniature waterfalls, so if your backyard is large enough, you could have a raised paved walkway with steps leading up to a planted plateau and a water feature running alongside the walkway. It will be a costly undertaking, for you’ll need paving slaps, water pumps and various other building materials to create this type of garden.

Photo Credits: Flickr

For a simpler design, you could use timber decking to create different levels, as it’s very cost-effective to cover large areas and easy to install. Use bamboo fencing or bamboo screens to hide unsightly areas like compost heaps, a neighbour’s fence, walls or the barrel where you collect rainwater and to create different planting areas.

Instead of getting a plumber and builder to do the heavy work for your water feature, head to a large DIY store or garden centre and buy a simple water feature or fountain that won’t need plumbing or electric installation by an expert.

DIY stores sell small water features that are powered by solar energy. The beauty of such water features is that you can move them easily to another spot if you want to restyle your Balinese backyard after a while to create different planting areas.

You will need to contact a specialist supplier for exotic plants. Plants that grow in Bali will have very specific requirements with regard to light, soil and watering. Be sure to choose only plants that will survive in your local climate – remember Bali’s jungle plants are used to moist soil and dappled light, not a Mediterranean-style blaze or dryness of the Gibson Desert.

Drawing up a plan

For experienced gardeners, it won’t be difficult to draw up a plan, but if you are new to landscaping, you may need to hire an expert. You could also consult gardening books and scale down whatever design you choose by concentrating on those areas of the design that will work best in your backyard and your climate.

Suppose your backyard is small, and you want to use timber decking to cover unsightly concrete or a patch of unprofitable soil. In that case, you can implement a simple design with imported lava, sandstone or Paris stone artefacts, statues or planters hand-crafted in Bali. Instead of creating different tiers with decking, arrange artefacts on tiers created from large paving slabs – you saw pagoda-style stonework tiers at Bali’s most important temples.

Create your own mini-rainforest by grouping plants correctly, placing large vertical plants at the back and smaller “filler plants” at the front to form a solid green background for your hand-carved artefacts. Have a look at the Bali Tourism Board website and find out more about Bali’s flora: http://www.balitourismboard.org/bali_flora-and-fauna.html.

Don’t forget to add lighting if you plan to sit out in the evening. A few Balinese timber lanterns dangling from branches of palm trees to illuminate your seating area will be quite magical. Or try stonework lanterns suitable for garden lighting (12 volt) that light up the steps of your tiered decking. They won’t cost the earth and can serve as authentic “artefacts” instead of statues or sculptures.

Author Bio

This article is written by Jayde Ferguson, who writes for WA Timber Decking, a Perth-based Timber Decking specialist who supplies decking timber and decking supplies for the handyman, DIYer and builder.