<h5>The brief pulled a long list of set pieces into one back garden: a pool to swim in, a spa to sit in, a green to putt on, and somewhere to light a fire when the evening turns.</h5><p>The pool is drawn as a zero-edge rectangle, so the water sits flush with the limestone and reads as a sheet rather than a basin. The spa is raised just enough to spill back into it, faced in glass mosaic that picks up whatever colour the sky is doing.</p><h6>Stone and fire</h6><p>Limestone pavers run the full terrace and set the module for everything else. Fire bowls sit on cut stone pedestals at the pool corners, close enough to the water that the flame doubles in it.</p><h6>Beyond the terrace</h6><p>A golf green takes the far lawn, and a bronze sculpture anchors the axis so the eye has somewhere to land. Landscape lighting was drawn with the rest of it rather than added afterwards.</p>

Heirloom

<h5>Development of a master landscape and hardscape plan for the whole property.</h5><p>An estate this size fails quietly when it is designed in pieces: the drive is laid out by one trade, the terrace by another, and the lawn ends up as whatever is left. The master plan puts all of it on one drawing at one scale.</p><h6>What the plan covers</h6><p>Approach and drive, entry court, terraces and level changes, the lawn and its edges, and the planting structure that ties the house to the ground it sits on. Bronze sculpture sits out on the greensward, read against the fence line rather than the facade.</p><p>Drawn to scale, the set gives every contractor the same information to bid from.</p>

Rivermere

<h5>A contemporary outdoor living space with multiple functions.</h5><p>The site had to hold swimming, dining, sitting by a fire and a stretch of lawn, without any one of them crowding the others. The answer was to set the pool and spa hard against the house terrace and step the ground down to a separate fire terrace, so the two uses share a garden but not a floor.</p><h6>Level changes</h6><p>Low retaining walls double as seating and as the planted edge between levels. Turf runners set into the paving soften the drop and keep the two terraces reading as one surface from the house.</p><p>Planting is kept deliberately simple so the geometry carries the design.</p>

Appomattox

<h5>A narrow garden turned into a single long view.</h5><p>The pool runs almost the full width of the plot, with a flush spa at the near end, so the water reads as one unbroken surface from the house. A row of small trees along the boundary is uplit to give the garden a back wall after dark.</p><h6>Light as structure</h6><p>The lighting plan does most of the work in the evening: trees uplit at even intervals, path lights kept low along the terrace edge, and pool lights set to wash rather than glare. Reflected in still water, the tree line doubles.</p>

Tranquility Base

<h5>Classic architecture asks for a classic landscape, which mostly means resisting the urge to be clever.</h5><p>The garden is built from clipped boxwood, gravel walks and bluestone, arranged as a sequence of courtyards and terraces rather than one open space. Hedges do the work that walls would do indoors, and each turn gives you a different room.</p><h6>Structure before flowers</h6><p>Boxwood sets the geometry and holds it through winter. Greenswards give the eye somewhere quiet to rest between the planted edges. Urns and statuary are placed where a view needs stopping, not scattered for effect.</p><h6>After dark</h6><p>Gas lanterns and a landscape lighting plan carry the structure into the evening, when the clipped forms read best. The garden was published in Veranda in 2021.</p>

Southern Composure

<h5>A garden designed to defer to the house rather than compete with it.</h5><p>Stone walls and paved terraces set the levels, and the planting is arranged in clipped, repeating blocks so the structure holds through the year. The result is a garden that looks like it was always there.</p>

Gardens drawn one property at a time

Heirloom

Rivermere

Appomattox

Tranquility Base

Southern Composure

Witherspoon Keep

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