Metal Garden Edging at Wayfinder Winery

We supplied corten steel garden edging for the new build at Wayfinder Winery in Margaret River. It is a project where the landscape and the architecture were clearly considered together, and the edging plays a quiet part in holding the two in relation to each other. Here is a look at how corten edging works on a site of this scale, and what it does once the planting matures around it.

The site

The building sits low in the landscape, its rammed earth walls running in long horizontal bands that follow the fall of the ground. The roofline is planted, so from a distance the structure reads almost as part of the slope it occupies. Marri and jarrah stand behind it.

The planting is native and largely local. Grass trees with blackened trunks are set at intervals along the beds, with tussock grasses, silver-foliaged shrubs and low groundcovers filling the ground between them. Sandstone boulders sit low in dark mulch, some laid in short runs, others placed singly. It is a planting scheme with a lot of texture and very little formality, and it needed an edge that would give it structure without competing with it.

Holding long curved lines

The bed lines at Wayfinder run in continuous curves, sweeping along the front of the building and around the gravel approach. Very little of it is straight.

This is where steel edging earns its place. Corten edging bends to a curve without needing to be cut and rejoined, so a long sweeping line can be formed on site and adjusted as it goes. The result is a curve that holds its shape rather than one made up of short straight segments meeting at angles. Where the beds meet the gravel and sand of the approach, the edge does real work, holding the mulch on one side and keeping the loose surface on the other from washing into the planting during a Margaret River winter.

How the corten surface develops

The photographs here were taken while the build was still under way, and the edging already carries its weathered surface. That is the character of corten. Rather than being coated or painted, the steel develops a stable outer surface over time that gives it the deep russet colour it is known for.

On this site the colour does a lot of work. It picks up the warm ochre of the rammed earth walls behind it and the amber tones running through the sandstone boulders, so the edge sits within the palette rather than cutting across it. As the surface matures the colour deepens and evens out, and against dark mulch and grey-green native foliage it becomes one of the warmer notes in the garden.

Supply for landscape and commercial projects

We hold corten steel edging in a range of heights and gauges at our Subiaco showroom, where samples of each profile and finish are on display.

If you have a project coming up and want to talk through heights, gauges and quantities, call, get in touch through our contact page, or call in to the showroom at Stand 273, Homebase, 55 Salvado Rd, Subiaco.