Wahroonga, NSW

We built a single, low-lying wicking bed for a lady in Wahroonga who wanted to make the most of a sunny spot on top of a retaining wall. On the steep, established blocks of the Upper North Shore, flat and sunny ground is genuinely scarce, so a sunny ledge or the top of a wall is prime growing real estate once you can put a bed there safely.

We kept this one low and neat so it sits comfortably on the wall and stays easy to reach, tucked into the light where the surrounding trees don't reach. As a wicking bed, it keeps its water in a reservoir underneath and draws it up to the roots, which means it grows a full range of vegetables in a position where open ground — shaded, root-filled and hard to dig — would struggle.

Wahroonga's leafy canopy and clay soils are lovely to live among but tough to grow food in directly, so lifting the veggies into a clean, self-watering bed sidesteps both problems at once. A low bed like this will happily carry salad, herbs and compact crops through the year with barely any fuss, and it looks tidy doing it.

Our beds are made from durable, food-safe timber built to weather years of Upper North Shore seasons without rotting or needing sealing. If you've got a sloping Wahroonga block, or a sunny ledge in Turramurra or Pymble that's crying out for a productive garden, we'd love to help you make it work.