Where timber screens meet garden design: a Perth maker's story
In a workshop tucked behind a brick warehouse in Osborne Park, a quiet maker has spent the last decade cutting, sanding, and assembling timber screens that now punctuate gardens from Cottesloe to Mount Lawley. Her name has begun appearing in design circles across Western Australia, though she prefers to let the work speak for itself. This is the story of how a single craftsperson's lattice panels became part of Perth's everyday landscape.
Timber screens are rarely the most photographed element of a garden. Yet walk through pockets of the inner suburbs and you start to notice them: a screen softening a boundary wall in a North Perth courtyard, a freestanding panel shading a Mediterranean-style garden in Mosman Park, a vertical slat arrangement climbing the side of a renovated terrace in Highgate. The maker behind many of these pieces is Elke Riemer, a third-generation woodworker whose family settled in the Hills region after emigrating from Germany's Black Forest in the 1990s.
From workshop to garden wall
Riemer's path into lattice making was neither planned nor particularly romantic. She trained as a furniture maker at a TAFE in Balga, then spent several years working on high-end residential joinery in Fremantle before a client asked her to repair a weathered teak screen on a heritage property in Guildford. The repair took longer than expected, mostly because she dismantled the original screen and studied how it had aged. The grain had silvered unevenly, some of the joints had loosened, but the geometry still held. That project reshaped her thinking about how screens are used outdoors.
After Guildford, she began taking small commissions for garden screens. Early work went into private courtyards in Subiaco and a courtyard renovation at a café on Beaufort Street. Word travelled through local landscapers and architects who appreciated her willingness to think about a screen as a piece of joinery rather than a flat panel. Today her workshop produces around sixty screens a year, ranging from modest side-gate panels to large-scale installations measuring several metres wide.
The geometry behind the grain
What separates Riemer's work from standard timber screens is the attention given to how light passes through the pattern. Most off-the-shelf lattices rely on a repeating square or diamond grid, which produces an even, almost flat shadow. Her patterns are drawn from architectural motifs she has collected over years: a hexagonal arrangement inspired by the brickwork of a Claremont post-war home, a chevron sequence adapted from a Japanese shoji panel she saw at a travelling exhibition at the Perth Cultural Centre, and a long diagonal weave drawn from a market basket her grandmother kept in the family shed.
The geometry is set out at full scale on the workshop floor before any timber is cut. She works primarily in joinery-graded hardwoods, though the species varies depending on what is available through her suppliers. For clients who want the screens to silver naturally in the coastal air, she recommends more open grains. For shaded courtyards where the screens remain under cover, tighter weaves tend to hold their colour. This is one of the reasons her pieces are increasingly specified by landscape architects working on the external shading solutions that are reshaping Perth homes.
Sourcing timber from the west
Western Australia has long produced some of the country's most distinctive hardwoods, and Riemer sources as much as she can locally. Jarrah and marri remain her two most-requested species for residential work, both for their depth of colour and their stability in the coastal climate. Blackbutt is another favourite, particularly for screens that need to take a finer detail. She has also begun working with reclaimed timbers salvaged from old railway bridges in the Wheatbelt and from demolition sites around inner-city Perth, including pieces of original jarrah flooring lifted from a 1920s hotel in Fremantle.
The move toward reclaimed timber has not been purely aesthetic. Local supply of high-grade hardwood has tightened over the past decade, and freight costs for imported timbers have risen sharply. Working with reclaimed boards means longer preparation times — old nails have to be located with metal detectors, and some boards arrive too warped to use — but the finished pieces carry a patina that new timber cannot replicate. Several of her recent commissions for heritage-sensitive areas around the Perth Cultural Centre have specified reclaimed jarrah precisely because it matches the tone of surrounding streetscapes.
Screens that shape city gardens
The first garden to feature Riemer's screens in a public-facing way was a small pocket park in Leederville, redesigned in 2022 by a local landscape practice. The screens were used to create a layered planting edge, breaking up the boundary between the park and the footpath without forming a solid wall. The success of that project led to further commissions in Victoria Park, along the redeveloped riverfront near the Causeway, and in a community garden in Midland.
Residential work remains the bulk of the order book, and the screens have begun appearing in some of Perth's most photographed gardens. A recent project in Peppermint Grove used a tall vertical-slat screen to frame a poolside lawn, while a heritage restoration in East Fremantle incorporated a chevron-patterned panel to filter afternoon light into a courtyard dining area. In each case the screen is doing more than providing privacy. It is shaping how the garden is read, controlling views, and softening the visual weight of surrounding walls and fences.
Recognition across the Australian design community
Outside Perth, Riemer's work has been slower to gain attention, though that is beginning to shift. A handful of her screens were featured in a Sydney gallery exhibition on Western Australian craft earlier this year, and she has been named among the early-career practitioners involved with a local design initiative. The full ambassador cohort, which includes lighting designers, furniture makers, and a textile artist working out of a Margaret River studio, is documented on the programme page, and Riemer joins the list this year.
The recognition matters for a craft that often sits in the background. Timber screens are classed as ancillary building elements under most Australian building codes, which means they rarely attract the attention given to a kitchen renovation or a statement pendant. Yet they shape how people use their outdoor rooms every day. Several of the studios that now specify her work have spoken about the difference it makes to specify a screen designed by a maker rather than a flat-pack panel from a warehouse supplier.
What sets the work apart from standard off-the-shelf panels
The differences between hand-made screens and mass-produced options are most visible after a few years of weathering. A mass-produced panel begins to warp and silver unevenly within a decade, while a hand-made screen tends to age in a way that feels more deliberate. The distinctions between the two approaches are summarised below.
| Aspect | Hand-made screen (Riemer workshop) | Standard off-the-shelf panel |
|---|---|---|
| Timber sourcing | Locally milled or reclaimed WA hardwoods, hand-selected | Imported pine or radiata, batch-graded |
| Pattern detail | Bespoke geometry, full-scale setting out | Repeating stock patterns, usually square or diamond |
| Joinery | Mortise-and-tenon or concealed stainless fixings | Stapled or nailed, visible fasteners |
| Finish | Optional oil or left to silver naturally | Pre-treated, often with a uniform tint |
| Lifespan in coastal air | 20+ years with periodic oiling | 8–12 years before visible degradation |
Choosing a screen that will hold up
- Look for screens with mortise-and-tenon joinery rather than visible staples or screws.
- Ask about the timber species and whether it has been acclimatised to Perth's coastal humidity.
- Consider the pattern density: tighter weaves cast deeper shadows and suit north-facing courtyards.
- Specify reclaimed timber where heritage sensitivity matters, particularly in older suburbs like Fremantle and Guildford.
- Plan for an oiling schedule every 18–24 months if you want to preserve colour rather than let the screen silver.
The easiest way to see Riemer's screens alongside the work of other Perth-based makers is to spend an afternoon at the Contemporary Wine In Design showcase. The event draws architects, designers, and makers from across Western Australia for an evening of conversation, with installations spread across the venue. Tickets are limited, and a free pass is available for those who register through the Contemporary website before the doors open.
