- Garden & Outdoor
- Garden
Garden Ideas and Designs
Neil Michael - Axiom Photography
Parts for North terrace - aineos
Irregular bluestone stepper path and woodland shade garden.
path - sallyberkery
Our clients on this project were inspired by their travels to Asia and wanted to mimic this aesthetic at their DC property. We designed a water feature that effectively masks adjacent traffic noise and maintains a small footprint.
Raised beds - adam_field49
Bliss Garden Design
Ferns under maple - aideenjordan
William Carson Joyce
Lovely planting - jeanminty
Sinuous Driveway - Acts as the backbone of the garden. Both the lower and upper garden are bordered by Annabelle Hydrangeas and Zelkovas planted along the asphalt driveway making the driveway recede and emphasizing a garden feel to an otherwise functional space.
Photo credit: ROGER FOLEY
the strength of using just one colour - walshk2011
The entire grounds of this Lake Minnetonka home was renovated as part of a major home remodel.
The orientation of the entrance was improved to better align automobile traffic. The new permeable driveway is built of recycled clay bricks placed on gravel. The remainder of the front yard is organized by soft lawn spaces and large Birch trees. The entrance to the home is accentuated by masses of annual flowers that frame the bluestone steps.
On the lake side of the home a secluded, private patio offers refuge from the more publicly viewed backyard.
This project earned Windsor Companies a Grand Honor award and Judge's Choice by the Minnesota Nursery and Landscape Association.
Photos by Paul Crosby.
A local Houston art collector hired us to create a low maintenance, sophisticated, contemporary landscape design. She wanted her property to compliment her eclectic taste in architecture, outdoor sculpture, and modern art. Her house was built with a minimalist approach to decoration, emphasizing right angles and windows instead of architectural keynotes. The west wing of the house was only one story, while the east wing was two-story. The windows in both wings were larger than usual, so that visitors could see her art collection from the home’s exterior. Near one of the large rear windows, there was an abstract metal sculpture designed in the form of a spiral.
When she initially contacted us, the surrounding property had only a few trees and indigenous grass as vegetation. This was actually a good beginning point with us, because it allowed us to develop a contemporary landscape design that featured a very linear, crisp look supportive of the home and its contents. We began by planting a garden around the large contemporary sculpture near the window. Landscape designers planted horsetail reed under windows, along the sides of the home, and around the corners. This vegetation is very resilient and hardy, and requires little trimming, weeding, or mulching. This helped unite the diverse elements of sculpture, contemporary architecture, and landscape design into a more fluid harmony that preserved the proportions of each unique element, but eliminated any tendency for the elements to clash with one another.
We then added two stonework designs to the landscape surrounding the contemporary art collection and home. The first was a linear walkway we build from concrete pads purchased through a retail vendor as a cost-saving benefit to our client. We created this walkway to follow the perimeter of the home so that visitors could walk around the entire property and admire the outdoor sculptures and the collections of modern art visible through the windows. This was especially enjoyable at night, when the entire home was brightly lit from within.
To add a touch of tranquility and quite repose to the stark right angles of the home and surrounding contemporary landscape, we designed a special seating area toward the northwest corner of the property. We wanted to create a sense of contemplation in this area, so we departed from the linear and angular designs of the surrounding landscape and established a theme of circular geometry. We laid down gravel as ground cover, then placed large, circular pads arranged like giant stepping stones that led up to a stone patio filled with chairs. The shape of the granite pads and the contours of the graveled area further complimented the spirals and turns in the outdoor metal sculpture, and balanced the entire contemporary landscape design with proportional geometric forms of lines, angles, and curves.
This particular contemporary landscape design also has a sense of movement attached to it. All stonework leads to a destination of some sort. The linear pathway provides a guided tour around the home, garden, and modern art collection. The granite pathway stones create movement toward separate space where the entire experience of art, vegetation, and architecture can be viewed and experienced as a unity.
Contemporary landscaping designs like create form out of feeling by using basic geometric forms and variations of forms. Sometimes very stark forms are used to create a sense of absolutism or contrast. At other times, forms are blended, or even distorted to suggest a sense of complex emotion, or a sense of multi-dimensional reality. The exact nature of the design is always highly subjective, and developed on a case-by-case basis with the client.
back garden - orlaoheocha
Picnic area underneath tree bottom right of garden (raised) - shaneclifford1975
The woodland strolling garden combines steppers and shredded bark as it winds through the border, pausing at a “story stone”. Planting locations minimize disturbance to existing canopy tree roots and provide privacy within the yard.
Property Marketed by Hudson Place Realty - Sophisticated , Elegant & Unique in design. this pristine single family brownstone enjoys a seamless blend of original details and modern amenities. Tastefully and extensively renovated , this gracious home features 5-6 BR , 3.5B , new and upgraded mechanical systems, full height cellar, intricate plasterwork , inlaid exotic wood floors , 9 beautiful mantels & deep architect designed yard. Unique center staircase allows for full width floors . This very rare beauty is the ideal urban family home
This brick fire pit and seat wall are located along a switch back footpath down from the main residence on a steep hillside. Creating a destination greatly increased the owners' use of their property!
photography by Susan Teare
Connect outbuilding to house - jacqueline_fox7