Landscape Design
Before and Afters
Patio of the Week: Vibrant Color Enlivens a Toronto Courtyard
Designers make a small sloped backyard usable by creating spaces for dining, planting and playing
Three generations of a family share this long, narrow outdoor space in downtown Toronto. Everyone in the family wanted to make good use of their small backyard, but a slope had rendered it all but unusable. The team at Plant Architecture, an architecture and landscape architecture firm, designed a vibrant courtyard that includes a dining area, a secret garden retreat, planters and beds for herbs and vegetables and a shed for bike storage. Brightly painted boards and railings add vibrant color and a sense of playfulness to the courtyard year-round.
A Courtyard Approach
“My clients had lived in France in a home that had a wonderful small courtyard. So they knew that even though their yard was not large, it had a lot of capacity,” Rapoport says. She made it functional by leveling the space with cedar decking. The surrounding walls complete the courtyard feel.
Thanks to the decking approach, grading was not required. Refer back to the “before” photo to see that the planting-bed openings are at the original grade of the yard.
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“My clients had lived in France in a home that had a wonderful small courtyard. So they knew that even though their yard was not large, it had a lot of capacity,” Rapoport says. She made it functional by leveling the space with cedar decking. The surrounding walls complete the courtyard feel.
Thanks to the decking approach, grading was not required. Refer back to the “before” photo to see that the planting-bed openings are at the original grade of the yard.
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The second and third generations, a couple and their children, use the lower level as their main living space and sleep on the top level of the three-story home. One of the homeowners’ mothers lives in a separate apartment on the main level. The courtyard sits a few steps up from the lower level, which has direct access.
This is the view of the courtyard from the top level, and the main level has a balcony that overlooks the courtyard. The courtyard includes a storage shed for bikes with a green roof, a secret garden to the right of it and a dining area. There is also a small area just below the area shown in this photo for lounge chairs and planting vegetables.
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This is the view of the courtyard from the top level, and the main level has a balcony that overlooks the courtyard. The courtyard includes a storage shed for bikes with a green roof, a secret garden to the right of it and a dining area. There is also a small area just below the area shown in this photo for lounge chairs and planting vegetables.
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This is the view from the lower level, where the young family’s kitchen and living room are located a few feet below the new decking. The concrete steps and wall were existing, and the modern stainless steel railing is new. The designers added linear planter boxes for the homeowners to grow herbs, and just out of view to the right is a small bed for growing vegetables.
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Storage Shed With a Green Roof
Like many people in Toronto, this family does not own a car — they walk and bike everywhere. Part of the project was building a shed at the back of the property for bike storage. And the roof is planted with sedums and herbs. “This family is really tall, and they use a ladder when they need to tend to these plants without any problems,” Rapoport says.
How to Install a Green Roof
Like many people in Toronto, this family does not own a car — they walk and bike everywhere. Part of the project was building a shed at the back of the property for bike storage. And the roof is planted with sedums and herbs. “This family is really tall, and they use a ladder when they need to tend to these plants without any problems,” Rapoport says.
How to Install a Green Roof
The boards extend seamlessly across the shed’s custom door. The planting bed contains North American natives, including switchgrass (Panicum virgatum), bunchberry (Cornus canadensis) and redtwig dogwood (Cornus sericea). The bark on the redtwig dogwood matches one of the colors used on the boards and adds winter interest.
Delineated Spaces
“We didn’t have a lot to work with here, so the orientation of the planks helps them serve much like area rugs and runners,” Rapoport says of the way she delineated the spaces. The boards on the right delineate the dining area, and the boards that lead to the shed form a bridge for bicycles. To the left of that is a path that leads to a side alley out to the street.
Past the dining table, a Venus kousa dogwood (Cornus kousa ‘KN30-8’) tree adds year-round interest between its foliage, berries, bark and blooms. There are several steps down to the tree, and behind it at the edge of the courtyard, they nestled a sunken secret garden
“We didn’t have a lot to work with here, so the orientation of the planks helps them serve much like area rugs and runners,” Rapoport says of the way she delineated the spaces. The boards on the right delineate the dining area, and the boards that lead to the shed form a bridge for bicycles. To the left of that is a path that leads to a side alley out to the street.
Past the dining table, a Venus kousa dogwood (Cornus kousa ‘KN30-8’) tree adds year-round interest between its foliage, berries, bark and blooms. There are several steps down to the tree, and behind it at the edge of the courtyard, they nestled a sunken secret garden
A long built-in bench makes the most of the dining area’s space. And the seats flip up, providing storage for gardening supplies. The dogwood tree’s berries match one of the colors found in the vibrant paint colors.
“Yards in Toronto tend to be long and skinny, and we often like to create a little retreat toward the back,” Rapoport says. When one of the homeowners expressed that they’d like a nice place to read, the designer created this stepped-down “secret garden” behind the dogwood tree. Because of the retaining wall, it is about 1½ stories above the neighboring property, which places it in the canopy of the neighbor’s tree. This gives this cozy spot a private treehouse-like feel in the middle of the city. The opening on the left frames the view like a picture window.
The bench has sloped sides for lounging, and it’s a great spot for the kids to play games. Plants in the bed include bunchberry (Cornus canadensis), royal fern (Osmunda regalis) and Pennsylvania sedge (Carex pensylvanica).
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The bench has sloped sides for lounging, and it’s a great spot for the kids to play games. Plants in the bed include bunchberry (Cornus canadensis), royal fern (Osmunda regalis) and Pennsylvania sedge (Carex pensylvanica).
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And Of Course, the Color
“These are really sparky people who have a great sense of fun,” Rapoport says. Because their main living spaces face the courtyard, she wanted to give them a vibrant view during Toronto’s long winters. The cedar walls have playful lines of bold colors interspersed between the natural boards that will weather to silvery-gray over time.
“These are really sparky people who have a great sense of fun,” Rapoport says. Because their main living spaces face the courtyard, she wanted to give them a vibrant view during Toronto’s long winters. The cedar walls have playful lines of bold colors interspersed between the natural boards that will weather to silvery-gray over time.
The colorful boards were painted in a shop before installation, which will allow the paint to last longer.
This plan shows the area housing the vegetable and herb garden, which was not shown in the photos (center bottom), and the alley that leads to the street. The dotted boxes in the alley represent the compost and separate recycling bins.
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Courtyard at a Glance
Who uses it: Three generations of a family
Location: Toronto
Size: 550 square feet (51 square meters)
Designers: Lisa Rapoport, Lisa Dietrich, Carla Lipkin and Taylor Gould of Plant Architect
Before: There are two things to understand about the existing site — first, the yard sloped down from the house toward the property line. And there were high retaining walls around the property (beneath the chain-link fence on the left and to the right side of the brick house) that made it about a story higher than some of the surrounding properties. Architect Lisa Rapoport deemed the existing yard “basically unusable” in the condition it was in.