The best pool landscaping ideas in Australia don’t stop at the water’s edge. The pool area should feel like an extension of the house, not a separate zone — a single, considered outdoor space where the pool, the planting, the seating, and the surrounds all work together.
This guide covers the plants, layouts, and design moves that make a poolside landscaping project feel resolved. Every example assumes a real Australian backyard: long hot summers, short wet winters, and the need for a pool area that looks good year round and stays low maintenance.
Start With the Pool’s Role in the Backyard
Before plants, before paving, before furniture, decide what role the pool plays. Is it a swim-laps pool, a kids splash zone, or a glassy focal point that frames the view from the living room?
The answer changes everything. A swim pool wants long sight lines and a narrow planting bed. A family pool wants open lawn and shaded seating. A focal-point pool wants careful symmetry and a strong visual anchor — typically a feature tree or a sculptural shape on the other side of the water.
Pool Landscaping Plants for Australian Conditions
Plant choice is what separates a pool that feels tropical-resort from one that feels like an empty rectangle. The right species also reduce ongoing maintenance and create a natural barrier between the pool and the rest of the garden.
Palm Trees: The Resort-Style Anchor
Palm trees are the fastest way to give a pool area instant resort feeling. A single Bangalow or Kentia palm beside the pool creates a strong vertical focal point. A row of Foxtail palms along the back fence frames the pool from inside the house and gives a tropical sense year round.
Choose palms with neat, self-cleaning fronds where possible — they drop less debris into the water and keep the pool low maintenance.
Ornamental Grass for Movement and Texture
Ornamental grass species like Lomandra, Carex, and Miscanthus bring movement to a still pool. They catch the breeze, soften hard paving edges, and form a gentle natural barrier without blocking the view.
Ornamental grasses are also one of the most practical choice plants for a pool area — they tolerate splash, full sun, and reflected heat off paving, and they need almost no pruning.
Shrubs and Layered Planting
Shrubs do the middle work in a pool garden. Westringia, Gardenia Florida, Murraya, and dwarf Agapanthus all thrive in Australian conditions and form a dense, evergreen frame around the pool. Layered shrub planting reads as one inviting living wall, not a row of separate plants.
Low Maintenance Plant Combinations
The lowest maintenance pool landscaping plants share three qualities: tough roots, neat leaves, and minimal flower drop. Combine ornamental grasses, structural succulents like Agave or Aloe, and a few feature shrubs and you have a pool garden that looks intentional in every season.
Plants to Avoid Around Pools
Hardy Plants With Non-Invasive Roots
Hardy plants should have non-invasive roots to avoid damage to infrastructure, particularly pipes. The best poolside plants in the Australian climate are salt and chlorine tolerant, low-mess, and have non-invasive root systems. Ideal pool plants are sun-hardy, low-mess, non-invasive, and salt-tolerant — and plants need to be able to withstand high sun exposure, wind, and splashes of salt or chlorine water without damage.
Privacy Screening Plants for Pools
Lilly Pilly and Bambusa gracilis are recommended as screening plants for pool areas. Bamboo can grow anywhere from 2 to 10 meters tall, making it one of the best options for creating a privacy screen around pools, and is generally low-maintenance once established. Hibiscus (Hibiscus rosa-sinensis) is a flowering plant that can grow to about 2 to 3 meters tall, providing excellent coverage and privacy around pools while requiring only occasional pruning. Callistemon, also known as the bottlebrush plant, is drought-tolerant and requires minimal pruning, making it a low-maintenance option for pool landscaping while providing excellent vertical privacy.
Groundcovers and Structural Plants
Liriope (Liriope muscari) is a low-maintenance perennial ground cover that thrives in full sun to partial shade, requiring minimal watering once established and providing a dense carpet around pools. Star Jasmine and Liriope are hardy groundcovers appropriate for poolsides. Agave attenuata, Cycads, and Bird of Paradise are structural plants suitable for poolside environments. Pennisetum (Pennisetum alopecuroides), known as fountain grass, is exceptionally low-maintenance, thriving in full sun and well-drained soil, and can grow up to 1 meter tall, forming a natural barrier around pools.
Avoid species with messy flowers, sticky berries, or aggressive root systems. Bottlebrush, jacaranda, and figs cause problems. So do most deciduous trees — leaves in the pool every autumn become a chore.
Pool Surrounds and Paving
The hard surfaces around the pool define the feeling of the space as much as the plants do. Light-coloured travertine, honed concrete, or limestone pavers stay cool underfoot, reflect the water, and make the whole pool area feel larger and more inviting.
Coping and Edge Detail
Pool coping — the edge that caps the pool wall — is the detail most people don’t notice until it’s wrong. A sharp 90-degree bullnose in matching paving reads as architectural. A thicker, slightly raised stone capping reads as more natural.
Making a Narrow Pool Area Feel Bigger
A narrow pool area can feel cramped if the design fights it. Run paving long-ways instead of across, repeat the same material from the house out to the pool, and place planting on the other side of the water rather than along both edges. The space feels longer and more open.
Rectangular Pool Landscaping Ideas
Rectangular pools are the most common shape in Australian backyards because they suit lap swimming and modern architecture. They also benefit most from disciplined landscaping.
Frame the Long Edges, Not Both Ends
Plant the long sides of a rectangular pool with low ornamental grasses and a clipped shrub line. Leave the ends open for entry steps and a dining area. The pool reads as an organised piece of geometry inside a softer garden.
Use Symmetry to Anchor the Design
Two matching pots at one end of a rectangular pool, a row of three identical palm trees on the other side, or a pair of feature trees framing a sun lounge — symmetry creates a sense of intent that asymmetric pool gardens rarely achieve.
Backyard Pool Landscaping Ideas for Family Homes
A family backyard pool needs to do three things at once: be safe, be beautiful, and be functional. The landscape design carries most of that load.
Lawn Plus Pool
A strip of lawn between the house doors and the pool gives kids a soft landing zone, gives adults a place to set chairs and tables, and breaks up hard paving. Buffalo or Zoysia varieties handle pool splash and traffic better than a couch.
Shaded Seating Areas
Seating beside the pool is non-negotiable. Built-in benches with timber tops, a pergola with a daybed, or a simple cluster of outdoor chairs and a low table — the form matters less than the fact that there is somewhere comfortable to sit.
Outdoor Dining Beside the Water
A dining table positioned where you can see the pool turns a backyard into a living, life-filled space. A 6-seat table with shade above, water on one side, and planting on the other is the layout that gets used every weekend, not just on Christmas Day.
Poolside Landscaping for Small Backyards
Small yards are not a problem for pool landscaping — they’re a discipline. Every plant, every paver, every chair has to earn its place.
Vertical Living Walls
Native Australian Plants for Pool Areas
Designing an Australian native garden for your pool area will not only look amazing, but the native wildlife will also love it. Incorporating native Australian plants into your pool landscaping can create a sustainable environment that supports local wildlife and reduces water usage. Native Australian plants are well suited to the harsh Australian conditions and are often drought resistant, making them ideal for pool landscaping.
A vertical garden against the back wall takes a small pool area from feeling enclosed to feeling lush. Choose evergreen species that don’t drop heavily — Philodendron, dwarf Strelitzia, and trailing rosemary are practical choices.
One Strong Focal Point
Tropical Pool Landscaping
Incorporating tropical plants, natural stone, and wooden structures can create a serene atmosphere reminiscent of a Balinese retreat around your pool area. Layered tropical planting with palm trees and broadleaf evergreens carries a resort feeling year round.
One excellent feature beats five mediocre ones. A sculpted Frangipani, a single ornamental grass cluster lit from below, or a stack-stone feature wall on the far side of the pool gives the eye somewhere to land and makes the whole space feel resolved.
Outdoor Living Around the Pool
The pool is the centre, but the outdoor living areas around it are where life actually happens.
Pergolas and Pavilions
A simple steel-and-timber pergola beside the pool creates a shaded room without blocking the view. Add an outdoor kitchen or a fire pit and the pool area becomes a year-round outdoor space, not just a summer one.
Furniture That Suits a Pool Area
Incorporating outdoor seating that aligns with your indoor furniture in comfort and design can help unify the spaces, promoting a seamless transition between indoors and outdoors.
Rope, teak, powder-coated aluminium, and woven outdoor furniture all handle Australian sun better than upholstered indoor pieces forced outside. Choose chairs and tables with quick-dry cushions and finishes that don’t fade.
Outdoor Lighting
Soft uplights on palm trees, low-voltage path lighting, and warm strip lighting under bench seating turn the pool area into a usable space after dark. Lighting is the cheapest way to add beauty and a sense of luxury to existing pool landscaping.
Year Round Appeal: Designing Beyond Summer
Most pool gardens look great in January and tired by May. Year round appeal comes from evergreen structure — palms, grasses, shrubs that hold their form — plus a few seasonal moments like a flowering Frangipani or a Crepe Myrtle for autumn colour.
The Three-Layer Rule
Every good pool garden has three layers: a tall vertical layer (palm trees, slim columnar trees), a mid layer (shrubs, ornamental grass), and a low layer (groundcover, succulents, or paving). All three present every month of the year.
Pool Landscaping Layout Mistakes to Avoid
Treating the Pool as an Island
A pool plonked in the middle of empty lawn never feels right. Connect it to the house with paving, planting, or a deck so the whole backyard reads as one outdoor area.
Over-Planting the Edges
Dense planting all the way around a pool blocks views, drops more debris, and shrinks the space. Leave at least one long edge open for circulation and visual breathing room.
Ignoring the View From the House
The pool is seen more often from inside the house — through the kitchen window, the dining doors, the sliding glass — than from beside it. Design the planting and the focal point so the view from inside is as intentional as the view from poolside.
The function of every element should drive the design. The focus should be on how the pool, the planting, and the seating all function together as one space — not as separate features. When the function and focus are clear, the rest follows.
Bringing It Together
Great pool landscaping in Australia is about restraint as much as inclusion. A few well-chosen palm trees, a soft frame of ornamental grass and shrubs, light-coloured paving, considered seating, and one strong focal point — that’s the recipe. Add lighting and the whole space feels finished.
Frequently Asked Questions
What plants are best for around a pool in Australia?
Palm trees, ornamental grasses like Lomandra, evergreen shrubs such as Westringia and Gardenia, and structural succulents like Agave all thrive in Australian pool areas with low maintenance.
What plants should I avoid near my pool?
Avoid species with messy flowers, sticky berries, deciduous leaves, or aggressive roots — bottlebrush, jacaranda, figs, and most fruit trees cause ongoing pool maintenance.
How do I make a small pool area feel bigger?
Use light-coloured paving, plant only one long edge instead of both, run materials in long lines, and add a single strong focal point to anchor the space.
How do I get year round appeal in pool landscaping?
Build the design around evergreen structure — palms, grasses, and shrubs that hold their form in winter — and use flowering species for seasonal accents rather than as the main planting.
Do I need lawn around my pool?
Lawn is optional but useful. A strip of grass between the house and the pool gives a soft, kid-friendly landing zone and breaks up hard paving without much extra maintenance.
Planning Your Pool Landscaping
If you’re planning a new pool or redesigning an existing pool area, the plants and surrounds carry as much weight as the pool itself. Considered landscape design ties the pool, the paving, the planting, and the seating into a single outdoor space — and that’s what turns a backyard pool into the part of the house you actually live in. Our team handles concrete pool design and construction alongside paving, planting, and outdoor living so the pool and the landscape grow together from day one.
