The client’s newly renovated modern home needed to be matched with an updated garden that reflected the home’s new style, while conserving the existing entry pillars, a large lawn area in the back, and the existing pool.

The front-yard’s poured in-place concrete pads were set in a gravel bed, softened by colorful planting and a much-reduced lawn. The existing stone pillars were faced with white stucco to match the house and topped with planters. All large trees were preserved to give the garden a mature feel from the get-go.
The pool was built in a free-form style and featured a brick coping that needed to stay. Neither of these elements are usually found in modern gardens, but we embedded it into a simple, gray concrete pool deck with inset Connecticut Bluestone and channels for groundcover planting and repeated the free-form in a more restrained way: We added circular elements for a secondary seating area next to the pool (now also known as the ‘dance floor’) and for a raised dining area next to the house. We shaped the dining deck to allow the client to walk out of their house into their garden without a step for both the higher living room level and the lower family room.

The back-yard lawn was somewhat reduced to save water, but the loss of lawn was offset by the large new pool deck that offered ample play space for the client’s children.