Short answer
Cleaning and maintaining the common areas and gardens is generally the owners corporation’s responsibility, funded by the scheme. Under the Strata Schemes Management Act 2015 (NSW), the owners corporation has a duty to properly maintain and keep the common property in a good state of repair, which covers keeping shared areas clean and gardens tended. Individual owners look after the inside of their own lots.
What’s covered
Common property typically includes the shared foyers, stairwells, lifts, driveways, car parks, lawns and garden beds — so cleaning these and keeping the landscaping maintained falls to the owners corporation as part of its maintenance duty. In practice the committee (or a strata manager, if the scheme uses one) arranges cleaners and gardeners and pays them from the administrative fund. The exact extent of common property is set by the registered strata plan, so a courtyard or garden bed attached to a particular lot may or may not be common property depending on the plan.
Where an owner’s own responsibility starts
Inside your own lot, cleaning and upkeep are yours. A private courtyard or balcony can be a grey area — sometimes it’s common property the owners corporation maintains, and sometimes an owner has been given exclusive use of it by a by-law that also assigns them the upkeep. If a garden or paved area sits on the boundary, check the strata plan and any exclusive-use by-law for your scheme before assuming who mows or weeds it.
Keeping shared upkeep on track as a committee
A self-managed committee organises cleaning and gardening itself — engaging contractors, scheduling regular visits, and handling the invoices from the administrative fund. Straita helps a committee run that steadily: recording the contractors engaged, tracking the recurring work, and logging what was done and paid, so shared upkeep keeps happening on schedule and the spending is documented for owners.
Primary sources
- Strata Schemes Management Act 2015 (NSW) — s 106, the owners corporation’s duty to maintain and repair common property.
- NSW Government — Strata schemes (Fair Trading) — common property maintenance and levies.