Common property gardens, done without the drama.
Section 46 duties, what your plan of subdivision actually says is common property, contractor insurance, the noise hours that annoy twenty households at once, and honest 2026 per-visit pricing for Pakenham townhouse developments.
Section 46 is not optional, and the plan decides the boundary.
Under section 46 of the Owners Corporations Act 2006 (Vic), an owners corporation must repair and maintain the common property. That is a statutory duty, not a committee preference, and the lawns, entry beds, screening hedges and driveway verges on common property sit squarely inside it. An owners corporation that lets the front of a Pakenham development go to seed is not being relaxed, it is not doing its job.
The part that causes ninety percent of the arguments is the boundary. What is common property and what is lot land is defined by your plan of subdivision, not by where the fence looks like it sits and not by what the previous contractor happened to mow. Get the plan out before anyone gets upset. In plenty of Pakenham townhouse developments the front lawns and the driveway verges are common property while the courtyard behind is lot land, which is exactly why the front looks done and the back does not.
The other frequent one: a tree on common property is the owners corporation’s responsibility, and a street tree on the nature strip out front is Cardinia Shire’s. Nobody should be pruning the council’s tree because it shades unit 4. Ring the shire and ask.
Do you need a maintenance plan for the garden?
The Act sorts owners corporations into five tiers by lot count. Tier 1 and tier 2, broadly those above 50 lots, are required to prepare a maintenance plan and hold a maintenance fund. Tier 3, roughly 10 to 50 lots, which is most Pakenham townhouse developments, may prepare one but is not compelled to. Tier 4 and 5 are the small ones.
Here is our honest view, and it is not the one that sells us more work. A maintenance plan is genuinely valuable for the expensive, slow, forgettable items: retaining walls, drainage, paving, and mature trees. Those are the things that quietly become a $40,000 special levy because nobody budgeted for them across fifteen years. Tree work in particular is worth planning: pruning on common property should be done to AS 4373, and where there is any development or works on site, tree protection sits under AS 4970.
The mowing is not that. The mowing is a cycle and a per-visit rate. It does not need a fifteen-year plan, it needs a set day and someone who turns up. If a consultant is building you a landscape maintenance plan that mostly schedules mowing, you are paying for a document to tell you the grass grows in spring.
Two different policies, and neither covers the other.
This gets muddled at almost every committee meeting we have been asked to attend, so plainly:
- The owners corporation’s public liability policy. Under section 60 of the Owners Corporations Act 2006 an owners corporation with common property must hold public liability insurance of not less than $20 million. Worth a look at your own policy: the minimum was $10 million until December 2021, and committees still quoting the old figure are not unusual. That covers the OC’s liability for the common property.
- The contractor’s public liability policy. That covers the contractor’s negligence. Ask for the certificate of currency, do not accept a verbal “yeah we’re insured”, and file it.
Neither discharges the other. Your policy does not cover our negligence, and ours does not discharge your statutory duty.
Why it matters more here than on a private block: a mower or a line trimmer flings stones at real speed, and in a tight Pakenham townhouse complex there are a dozen parked cars and a dozen windows inside range instead of one. On a private block an uninsured operator is a bad idea. On common property it is a committee’s problem multiplied by the number of lots. The same reasoning, in the residential version, is in how to choose a gardener in Pakenham.
Worth adding: as the party with management or control of the site, an owners corporation has duties under the Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004 and the OHS Regulations 2017 toward people working there. In practice for garden work that means safe access, telling the contractor about hazards you know about, and not having residents wander into a slashing job. It is not onerous. It is worth knowing it exists.
You are annoying twenty households at once.
The Victorian Environment Protection Regulations 2021 prohibit motorised garden tools at a residential premises before 7am or after 8pm Monday to Friday, and before 9am or after 8pm on weekends and public holidays. Common property in a residential complex is residential premises.
The 9am weekend start is the one contractors get wrong, and on a private block it earns one grumpy neighbour. In a Pakenham townhouse development it earns twenty complaints to your OC manager on a Monday morning, which becomes an agenda item, which becomes a contractor change.
Our practice on common property: mid-morning, weekday, same day every cycle. It clears the early sleepers, it stays off the weekend entirely, most residents are at work, and the committee can tell owners exactly when it happens. A predictable day is worth more to an owners corporation than a cheap rate, because the cheap rate is what generates the complaints that cost the committee its evenings.
Priced per site per visit, and a worked example.
Common property is quoted per site per visit after a walk-around, not per lot. A committee that asks for a per-unit price is usually about to get a bad number, because cost is driven by the actual area, the obstacles and the access, not by how many people live there. A 14-unit development with an open driveway verge can be cheaper to mow than a 6-unit one with narrow gates and a dozen car bays to work around.
- Mow, trim, edge, blow-down, area under 600m²: $50 to $75 per visit.
- Larger areas, 700 to 1,000m²: $70 to $110 per visit.
- Hedge trim, 15 to 25 linear metres: $120 to $280 per trim.
- Bed weeding: $55 to $75 per hour.
- Mulch supplied and spread: $80 to $130 per cubic metre, aged product complying with AS 4454.
- Green-waste removal: $60 to $180 per load, Cardinia Shire transfer station fees included.
- One-off catch-up clean-up: $300 to $700.
A worked example. A 14-unit Pakenham townhouse development. Common property is about 750m² of lawn across the front and the driveway verges, four entry beds, and a 30 metre lillypilly screen along the side boundary. The regular visit sits at $95: mow, line trim, hard edge to every concrete line, and a full blow-down of the driveway and paths. Fortnightly October to May is 15 visits, $1,425; monthly June to August is three, $285. The screen gets shaped in October and tidied in February, 30 metres so $300 a trim, $600. Beds get four hours of weeding twice a year at $65, $520, and 3 cubic metres of mulch each September at $330.
Total: about $3,160 a year, or roughly $226 per lot per year, which is about $4.35 a week per household for common property that always looks done. That is the number worth taking to the AGM, because it is the one an owner can actually weigh.
What we are and what we are not.
We are a local lawn mowing and garden maintenance operation working Pakenham, Officer, Beaconsfield and the Cardinia Shire. We are not a national facilities contractor. If your OC manager wants one contract covering forty sites across Melbourne with a reporting portal and a 24-hour help desk, that is genuinely not us, and we would rather say so than waste a tender response.
What we are good for is the thing most Pakenham owners corporations actually want: the same bloke on site the same day every fortnight, who the residents recognise, who tells the committee when a limb has dropped or a path is lifting, and whose invoice matches the quote. Retirement villages are a different regime again, sitting under the Retirement Villages Act 1986 rather than the Owners Corporations Act, so ask us and we will tell you honestly whether the job suits us.
If your site is mostly acreage or a large undeveloped common area, that is slashing rather than mowing, and it comes with fire compliance attached; see fire prevention notices in Pakenham.
Common questions.
Who is responsible for the gardens on common property in a Pakenham body corporate?
The owners corporation is, and it is a statutory duty rather than a preference. Under section 46 of the Owners Corporations Act 2006 an owners corporation must repair and maintain the common property, and the landscaping, lawns, entry beds and screening on common property fall inside that. What is common property and what is on a lot is defined by your plan of subdivision, not by where the fence looks like it sits, so get the plan out before you argue about a garden bed. In a lot of Pakenham townhouse developments the front lawns are common property while the courtyards behind are lot land.
Does our owners corporation need a maintenance plan for the landscaping?
It depends on your tier. The Owners Corporations Act sets five tiers based on lot numbers, and tier 1 and tier 2 owners corporations, broadly those over 50 lots, are required to prepare a maintenance plan and hold a maintenance fund. Tier 3, roughly 10 to 50 lots, which covers most Pakenham townhouse developments, may prepare one but is not compelled to. Our honest view is that a maintenance plan is far more useful for the expensive slow items like retaining, drainage and mature trees than for the mowing. The mowing is a cycle and a per-visit rate, not a capital plan.
What insurance should a gardening contractor have for common property work?
Public liability, and you should ask for the certificate of currency rather than take a verbal answer. This matters more on common property than on a private block, because a mower flinging a stone in a tight Pakenham townhouse complex has a dozen cars and a dozen windows within range instead of one. Note this is separate from the owners corporation’s own obligations: under section 60 of the Owners Corporations Act 2006 an owners corporation with common property must itself hold public liability insurance of not less than $20 million. If your committee is still working to a $10 million figure, that is the old number, lifted to $20 million from December 2021, and it is worth checking your policy rather than assuming the broker caught it. Your contractor’s cover does not discharge that duty, and yours does not cover their negligence.
How is common property garden maintenance priced in Pakenham?
Per site per visit, quoted after a walk-around, not per unit. A committee that asks for a per-lot price is usually about to get a bad number, because the cost is driven by the actual area, the obstacles and the access, not by how many people live there. A 14-unit development with an easy open driveway verge can be cheaper to mow than a 6-unit one with narrow gates and a dozen car parks to work around. As a rough guide our per-visit rates run $50 to $75 on areas under 600 square metres and $70 to $110 on 700 to 1,000, with hedging at $120 to $280 a trim.
What hours can a contractor mow at a Pakenham townhouse complex?
The same residential limits apply, and they bite harder here because you are annoying twenty households at once instead of one neighbour. Under the Victorian Environment Protection Regulations 2021, motorised garden tools must not be used at a residential premises before 7am or after 8pm Monday to Friday, and not before 9am or after 8pm on weekends and public holidays. The 9am weekend start is the one that catches contractors out. In practice we schedule common property work mid-morning on a weekday, which keeps the noise away from both the early sleepers and the weekend, and gives the committee a predictable day.
Related reading & areas.
Common property work is usually a mow and edge cycle, screening hedge trims twice a year and mulch and weed control each spring. Timing is in the seasonal calendar, and pricing has the full range list. We work Officer, Beaconsfield and across the shire.
Need a number for the AGM?
Free walk-around and a written per-visit quote for your Pakenham common property. Same day every fortnight.