The Reserve
Flat Bush, Auckland
- 65 terraced homes
- Two levels, 4 bedrooms
- 8,000m² native woodland
The Reserve is a community of sixty-five terraced homes in Flat Bush, and it was conceived around a single idea: give the residents the ground back. Rather than letting cars and driveways define the street, the development pulls parking underground into a basement, leaving the surface free of vehicular traffic. What is left at street level is open, walkable space — a streetscape designed for the people who live there rather than the vehicles passing through.
At the heart of the development sits an 8,000-square-metre stand of native woodland. It is not a leftover margin or a token planting; it is the centrepiece, a real visual and recreational asset that the residents own outright. Building a development around a protected pocket of native bush is a harder brief than clearing a flat site and filling it — it constrains the layout and the yield — but it is exactly what gives The Reserve its character and its quiet.
Every home runs over two levels with four bedrooms, designed for families who intend to stay, and each owner holds a share in the woodland at the centre. The architecture was given real attention across the whole development rather than a single show home, so the streetscape reads as a considered whole. The Reserve is now completely sold out.
Put the cars underground, give the ground back
Sixty-five terraced homes normally means sixty-five driveways and a streetscape that belongs to vehicles. The Reserve refused that trade. The entire development sits over a single basement carpark of roughly five thousand square metres, so the surface could be handed back to the people living on it: walkable, car-free streets around the woodland at the centre.
A basement on that scale under terraced housing is a serious engineering and cost decision, the kind that never appears in a sales brochure but defines the place every day since. It is the same instinct that later put a car-stacker under our Logan Apartments in Epsom: solve the parking problem properly, underground, rather than letting it eat the neighbourhood.
Built around the bush, not through it
At the centre of the development stands the native woodland that gives The Reserve its name. It is not a leftover margin or a token planting strip; it is the centrepiece, and every owner holds a share in it.
Designing around a protected stand of bush constrains the layout and costs yield, and we accepted both, because it is exactly what gives the place its character and its quiet. A decade on, the woodland has only grown into the role.
A team that shows up across our projects
The Reserve was developed in partnership between Heartland and Sanctuary Group, designed by Peter Swan Architects, engineered by Candor3, and built by Capri Construction. The same names recur across Heartland’s work: Peter Swan and Candor3 served on our other Flat Bush development at Norwood Drive, and Swan again at Western Park in Ponsonby.
That continuity is deliberate. Sixty-five homes over a full basement is not a contract you hand to strangers, and the fact that our partners keep coming back is the reference we value most.
Sixty-five families, sold out
Every home at The Reserve found an owner. Together with Norwood Drive nearby, it is part of the ninety-four terraced homes Heartland delivered across two Flat Bush developments, in a suburb that was still proving itself at the time.
Building family-scale homes, four bedrooms over two sensible levels, around real shared ground was a bet on what owner-occupiers actually want. The sell-out, and the way the development has held together since, settled the argument.
Where is The Reserve?
In Flat Bush, Auckland, close to Barry Curtis Park and the Botany town centre. The development is named for the native woodland reserve at its centre, which the homeowners collectively own.
Who designed and built The Reserve?
The Reserve was developed by Heartland in partnership with Sanctuary Group, designed by Peter Swan Architects, engineered by Candor3 and built by Capri Construction. It comprises 65 four-bedroom terraced homes over a basement carpark of roughly 5,000 square metres, completed in 2014.
Why are the streets at The Reserve car-free?
All resident parking sits in a shared basement beneath the development, so the surface streets carry no through-traffic and no driveways. The ground level belongs to the residents and the central woodland.
Are any homes at The Reserve for sale?
No, the development sold out. Homes resell from time to time through local agents, and resales have historically been tightly held.
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