What grows well in summer? What grows well in winter? Where is the sun? Where is there no sun? And where is the house open, or where are the living spaces open to those opportunities?" Burke says.If it's a larger-scale project, he recommends bringing in a professional."We've got landscape architects who do a brilliant job of integrating house and garden in a way that we in Australia should be absolutely all over," Burke says.But don't despair if you're working with a tighter space."Even a little side passage on your home or a little bit of a verge just outside your front door, a place to sit at the stoop, watch the neighbourhood walk by, that's a pretty pleasant thing to do," he says."It upgrades the whole house in a way that is hard to quantify I think it makes you feel so much more like it's home."For Burke, he has a small courtyard in the middle of his home."It's only two metres by four metres, so it's not a huge space, but it makes the whole house work, the whole house revolves around this little sort of nucleus of green."Burke suggests a carefully thought-out balcony space can do the job just as well.But irrespective of the size of the project, there are steps to take to keep your budget under control.For Michelle, she went searching for cost-effective materials in her Scenic Rim community, and beyond."I was in charge of looking out for free or very cheap things [online] to be used in the project