Our mandate for this garden was to create an attractive urban space, incorporating an extensive plant collection and reuse the hard landscape materials from the existing garden.

There were a number of competing angles on this pie shape lot, resulting in a subtle feeling of confusion. The design solution was to square the beds off the house and blur the obvious boundaries of the garden by using planting that visually connected to the neighboring greenery. Fencing was reconfigured to incorporate a generous side yard, creating a third garden that links the front and back gardens.

The existing patio was large and amorphous. Removing the 6 inches of concrete and flagstone was out of the question so it was cut down to a shape congruent with the squared off style of the new design concept.

The biggest challenge was creating enough structure in the garden to display a diverse community of plants congruently, and with regard to their unique and seasonal interest. Numerous beds were planned to house the collection. Existing mortared basalt walls were disassembled and reconstructed as dry stack walls to provide an anchoring and grounding element. Careful selection and placement of trees provide a skeletal frame.