Southern Composure

Classic architecture asks for a classic landscape, which mostly means resisting the urge to be clever.

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.

Structure before flowers

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.

After dark

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.