These beautiful natural fieldstones replaced a crumbling concrete block retaining wall at an in-home daycare, providing a fun, natural play space for children to climb on and explore.
Fieldstone retaining wall
Natural stone patio
Locally-sourced Chilton flagstone patio with a soldier course of pavers the client had on hand. We built this hardscaping to last a long time and designed it to maximize use of shade for entertaining on hot summer afternoons and evenings! To complete this new “garden room,” the client will finish the berm beyond the patio with her own plants once it has had time to settle, as all new berms do.
Plant combinations
A few shots from gardens I’ve created over the last several years.
Boulevard pollinator garden
This zero-waste project created a cool pollinator haven, replacing a parched, weedy boulevard. The urbanite hardscaping, a combination of recycled bricks and stone, gives people a place to step comfortably out of their cars and frames the planting dramatically. The paving is shaped in waves because the homeowners and their kids plan to create a sea serpent to dwell in this garden someday!
Suburban woodland area before & after
Photo 1 (before): This suburban backyard slope was filled with invasive species, including buckthorn, lily of the valley, white mulberry, common burdock, garlic mustard, vinca minor, and wintercreeper. This hill handles lots of rainfall coming off the adjacent house, and in addition to being invasive the existing plants were not doing enough to dissipate and slow the rush of water during heavy rainfalls. The homeowners estimated that this hill had eroded at least a couple feet over 35 years.
Photo 2 (mid-project): The invasive species have been removed. We’ve also begun to install river birch logs the homeowners had on-site to slow the flow of water down the hill. These will do the job while the plants we install get established. After that, they’ll provide valuable habitat for beneficial invertebrates and break down to nourish the soil.
Photos 3-5 (after): The slope is newly filled with spreading native plants that can pull off the combination of erosion control and shade tolerance this site demands. A low-growing, relatively simple plant palette (compared to a wild woodland area) lends the space a clear, open woodland feel by looking lush while accentuating the striking tree trunks. Planting as many species as one would find in a wild woods would have felt cluttered and maybe even claustrophobic on this site. Since these plants are natives grown from seed, there is still a lot of biodiversity in this planting!
Urbanite path & patio
These homeowners wanted to replace their failing, unimaginative 2-foot-wide concrete path with a comfortably wide path and generous patio that would lend their backyard a refined, organic feel. The path is a mix of reused concrete from the old path and stone. One homeowner, a Lord of the Rings fan, commented that Tolkien would be proud of this hardscape. With the remaining concrete from the old path recycled, this project produced nearly zero waste.