Build To Rent. Renting Made Easy at Resido, Sylvia Park, Auckland.
There is a moment in every urban project where architecture hands over to landscape – where the built form steps back and the question becomes simply: what does it feel like to be here? At Resido Sylvia Park, that moment was our beginning.
Kiwi Property commissioned GreensceneNZ Landscapes to design the outdoor spaces for this significant new residential development in Auckland’s Sylvia Park precinct. Working closely with architect Ashton Mitchell and builder Naylor Love, we set out to create something that residents would genuinely want to spend time in – a landscape with character, with purpose, and with the resilience to stay beautiful over the long term.
Auckland is a city shaped by its volcanic past, and Sylvia Park sits in the shadow of Maunga Maungarei — Mount Wellington. That geography informed our thinking from the start. We wanted the landscape to feel like it belonged here, not like it had been imported from a catalogue.
The process began with intensive collaboration across the design and engineering teams – working through the structural realities of a podium deck environment, where soil depth, drainage, and load all shape what is possible. Every decision about what to plant, where to pave, and how to connect spaces had to account for what lay beneath. It was methodical, painstaking work. The kind that rarely shows, but that everything else depends upon.
Across 3,000 square meters, the design weaves together a range of spaces for the rhythms of everyday residential life. A predominantly native planting palette threads biodiversity through the development — specimen trees anchor the larger spaces, while mixed shrubs and ground covers create a layered, seasonal richness. Street buffer planting softens the transition from the surrounding city, and feature trees give the arrival a sense of occasion.
Practical elements such as community gardens offer residents the pleasure of growing their own vegetables. A dedicated dog walk acknowledges that a home exists in this place. Generous privacy hedging and robust perimeter planting ensure that the spaces feel genuinely sheltered and homely.
Materials merge between concrete, tile, synthetic turf, and deep garden beds. Each transition is considered; each surface chosen for how it will feel underfoot, and how it will hold up in ten years’ time. Our goal was to create a landscape for residents to live well in an intensive housing environment.
We were involved from the earliest engineering conversations through to the final planting on site – overseeing procurement to ensure every specimen met the standard the project deserved. Working closely with Naylor Love through the complexities of building on a live metropolitan site, Resido delivers landscapes that are high quality and robust. The result is a landscape that earns its place. Not a backdrop to the building, but an important reason residents will to be proud to make Resido home.