First landscaping, one shot at it
Hammond Park is a newer Cockburn estate suburb with a young family demographic, and that produces a distinctive job: the first landscape a property has ever had, going in all at once. The lawn area, the retic, the edging, the paving and often the fencing are being decided in the same fortnight, frequently on a budget that has already absorbed a build.
Two pieces of practical advice follow from that, and neither is about turf products. Get the sequence right, because a bobcat that can still reach the back yard is worth real money and a fence installed first can cost you that. And decide the shape of the lawn area before anything is poured, because a synthetic lawn wants a clean, restrained edge to hold its base, and retrofitting one against existing paving is fiddlier and more expensive than building to it. There is more on how the stages fit together in Perth-wide synthetic grass information and in the pages linked at the bottom of this one.
If a dog is part of the plan, say so at the quoting stage rather than afterwards. Pet-grade turf is a different specification, shorter and denser over a permeable backing with an odour-absorbing infill, and it is far cheaper to specify than to swap. Dog areas in Hammond Park covers what actually changes.
Two dune systems, one suburb boundary
Spearwood and Bassendean are the two systems that meet here. The Spearwood description is "Sand dunes and plains. Yellow deep sands, pale deep sands and yellow/brown shallow sands". Bassendean is "Sand dunes and sandplains with pale deep sand, semi-wet and wet soil. Banksia-paperbark woodlands and mixed heaths". The Spearwood side, on the coastal flank, is generally the more forgiving of the two to work with; the Bassendean side brings the familiar catch that several of its phases record clay or a weak iron-organic hardpan at depth, which is why 6.6% of Hammond Park still maps to the poorly drained B4 and B3 phases despite the suburb being sand from end to end.
What you do with that as a homeowner is simple enough. Do not accept a base plan that was designed for "Perth sand" generically, and do ask what the installer found when they opened the ground. Mapping at this scale describes a district, not a lot, and there is no Australian Standard or WA government document that sets excavation depth or drainage for artificial turf by soil type in any case.
Repellence, heat and the honest limits
Two things about this suburb are worth stating without softening. The first is that its sand does not like taking water: 51.8% in the top repellence class and 41.9% in the next one down, on a layer with complete coverage here. Water Corporation's own guidance is that wetting agents are the standard answer for WA sand, and the simple dish test it describes will tell you about your own soil in ten minutes.
The second is heat. Synthetic turf gets hotter than grass and in full summer sun it gets very hot: Western Sydney University researcher Dr Sebastian Pfautsch has reported unshaded artificial turf approaching 100°C. On a new estate lot with no established tree anywhere on it, that is not a theoretical concern, it is the default condition. Lighter colours run cooler, a hose brings the surface temperature down quickly, and the single best investment is shade over the part of the lawn small children and dogs actually use. Any supplier claim about a yarn running a specific percentage cooler belongs to that supplier, and we will not repeat it as fact.
The verge, for completeness: the City of Cockburn requires approval where more than 25% of the verge is paved, and treats synthetic turf and hard surfaces the same way in that clause. Three kilometres north the same policy governs turf on a Success verge, over quite different soil.
Hammond Park: what new owners ask
Why does Hammond Park have two different soil systems in it?
Because the boundary between two of Perth's dune systems runs through the suburb. Roughly 42% of Hammond Park maps to the Spearwood system, which the WA Government describes as "Sand dunes and plains. Yellow deep sands, pale deep sands and yellow/brown shallow sands", and roughly 58% to the Bassendean System, "Sand dunes and sandplains with pale deep sand, semi-wet and wet soil". Both are sand. They are not the same sand, and two houses on opposite sides of the suburb can genuinely sit on different ground.
Which unit is the largest?
Spearwood S1b, at 36.7%, described as "Dune ridges with deep siliceous yellow brown sands or pale sands with yellow-brown subsoil and slopes up to 15%". After that comes Bassendean B1 at 32.6% and B2 at 19.1%, the low relief dunes and flat sandplain. Spearwood S4a adds 5.0%, and the poorly drained Bassendean phases B4 and B3 account for 4.4% and 2.2%. The percentages describe the whole suburb polygon, including roads and public open space.
Does a slope of up to 15% matter for a lawn?
It can, and it is the reason the S1b description is worth reading rather than skimming. Dune ridge ground means the fall across a block may be more than a flat sandplain block, which brings edge restraint, how the base is stepped or graded, and where run-off exits into the design conversation. On a new estate lot the builder has usually already established levels, so the question for an installer is simply whether the finished lawn level works with the existing falls or needs to be built up to them.
Is water repellence an issue in Hammond Park?
Yes, and the coverage here is complete, with none of the suburb unmapped. 51.8% carries the class ">70% of map unit has a high water repellence risk" and another 41.9% carries "30-50% of map unit has a high water repellence risk", leaving 6.3% in the "10-30%" class. Those labels are percentages of a map unit, not probabilities for one address. In practice it is why so many new lawns here need wetting agent from the first season rather than the third.
What is the verge rule in Hammond Park?
The City of Cockburn requires approval "for synthetic turf or hard surface treatments where more than 25% of the verge is paved", and requires verges with hard or impermeable areas to demonstrate urban heat island mitigation through street tree planting, landscaping and verge permeability. That is the only clause in the policy naming synthetic turf. Cockburn has separately said it does not support synthetic grass over an entire verge, and its Waterwise Verge Incentive Scheme has listed removal of synthetic turf among the applications it strongly encourages, so do not expect a rebate in the other direction.
We are landscaping a brand new block. When should the turf go in?
Sequence matters more on a handover block than most people expect. The cheapest version of this job is the one where a bobcat and a bulk delivery can still reach the back yard, which usually means before fencing, and where reticulation, edging and any paving are planned together rather than retrofitted around each other. Where a natural lawn is going in alongside, remember the watering exemption has to be applied for on the day of installation and expires after 42 days in the warm half of the year or 35 in the cool half.
Get the first landscape right the first time
On a new block the order of the work decides half the cost, and nobody gets a second cheap run at it. Send the area and what you want the space to do, and a vetted local installer will look at the block, check which side of the dune boundary it sits on, and give you a written price. No cost, no obligation.
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