This terraced landscape in Vermont flows from a high perch on a contemporary home’s second-story viewing deck through a grassy play space with a fire pit terrace, past mown fields to a swimming pond with a small lake house and on through a wet meadow to a beaver pond beyond. Throughout the property, shrubs, perennials, and annuals complement the colors of the house, as do this smokebush (Cotinus coggygria) and echinacea. Photo by Susan Teare.