A local Houston art collector hired us to create a low maintenance, sophisticated, contemporary landscape design. She wanted her property to compliment her eclectic taste in architecture, outdoor sculpture, and modern art. Her house was built with a minimalist approach to decoration, emphasizing right angles and windows instead of architectural keynotes. The west wing of the house was only one story, while the east wing was two-story. The windows in both wings were larger than usual, so that visitors could see her art collection from the home’s exterior. Near one of the large rear windows, there was an abstract metal sculpture designed in the form of a spiral. When she initially contacted us, the surrounding property had only a few trees and indigenous grass as vegetation. This was actually a good beginning point with us, because it allowed us to develop a contemporary landscape design that featured a very linear, crisp look supportive of the home and its contents. We began by planting a garden around the large contemporary sculpture near the window. Landscape designers planted horsetail reed under windows, along the sides of the home, and around the corners. This vegetation is very resilient and hardy, and requires little trimming, weeding, or mulching. This helped unite the diverse elements of sculpture, contemporary architecture, and landscape design into a more fluid harmony that preserved the proportions of each unique element, but eliminated any tendency for the elements to clash with one another. We then added two stonework designs to the landscape surrounding the contemporary art collection and home. The first was a linear walkway we build from concrete pads purchased through a retail vendor as a cost-saving benefit to our client. We created this walkway to follow the perimeter of the home so that visitors could walk around the entire property and admire the outdoor sculptures and the collections of modern art visible through the windows. This was especially enjoyable at night, when the entire home was brightly lit from within. To add a touch of tranquility and quite repose to the stark right angles of the home and surrounding contemporary landscape, we designed a special seating area toward the northwest corner of the property. We wanted to create a sense of contemplation in this area, so we departed from the linear and angular designs of the surrounding landscape and established a theme of circular geometry. We laid down gravel as ground cover, then placed large, circular pads arranged like giant stepping stones that led up to a stone patio filled with chairs. The shape of the granite pads and the contours of the graveled area further complimented the spirals and turns in the outdoor metal sculpture, and balanced the entire contemporary landscape design with proportional geometric forms of lines, angles, and curves. This particular contemporary landscape design also has a sense of movement attached to it. All stonework leads to a destination of some sort. The linear pathway provides a guided tour around the home, garden, and modern art collection. The granite pathway stones create movement toward separate space where the entire experience of art, vegetation, and architecture can be viewed and experienced as a unity. Contemporary landscaping designs like create form out of feeling by using basic geometric forms and variations of forms. Sometimes very stark forms are used to create a sense of absolutism or contrast. At other times, forms are blended, or even distorted to suggest a sense of complex emotion, or a sense of multi-dimensional reality. The exact nature of the design is always highly subjective, and developed on a case-by-case basis with the client.

Taking inspiration from the agrarian site and a rustic architectural vernacular this terraced hillside garden evolved in response to time and place. The design vision was to celebrate the site, preserve the oak trees, accentuate views and create opportunities for modern day recreation and play. Michele Lee Willson Phototgraphy

This project is located off of Crescent Ave in Greenville, SC. From inception, this project was a complete renovation with a ‘no-limit’ approach to the design. The clients wanted to create family-friendly gardens to enjoy with their grand-children and also larger spaces for hosting charitable events. A new driveway leads into the property where various materials are married in interesting ways to create new terraces and pavilions, gates and arbors, fountains and fireplaces. Of course, the gardens wouldn’t be complete without the wide variety of elegant plantings and accessories. This truly is a garden full of wonderful detail.

Backyard Bocce Court
Пример оригинального дизайна: осенняя спортивная площадка среднего размера на заднем дворе в стиле кантри с полуденной тенью

Пример оригинального дизайна: большая солнечная, весенняя спортивная площадка на заднем дворе в средиземноморском стиле с хорошей освещенностью

Пример оригинального дизайна: спортивная площадка на заднем дворе в средиземноморском стиле

Идея дизайна: спортивная площадка на заднем дворе в средиземноморском стиле

Our Houston landscaping team was recently honored to collaborate with renowned architectural firm Murphy Mears. Murphy Mears builds superb custom homes throughout the country. A recent project for a Houston resident by the name of Borow involved a custom home that featured an efficient, elegant, and eclectic modern architectural design. Ms. Borow is very environmentally conscious and asked that we follow some very strict principles of conservation when developing her landscaping design plan. In many ways you could say this Houston landscaping project was green on both an aesthetic level and a functional level. We selected affordable ground cover that spread very quickly to provide a year round green color scheme that reflected much of the contemporary artwork within the interior of the home. Environmentally speaking, our project was also green in the sense that it focused on very primitive drought resistant plant species and tree preservation strategies. The resulting yard design ultimately functioned as an aesthetic mirror to the abstract forms that the owner prefers in wall art. One of the more notable things we did in this Houston landscaping project was to build the homeowner a gravel patio near the front entrance to the home. The homeowner specifically requested that we disconnect the irrigation system that we had installed in the yard because she wanted natural irrigation and drainage only. The gravel served this wish superbly. Being a natural drain in its own respect, it provided a permeable surface that allowed rainwater to soak through without collecting on the surface. More importantly, the gravel was the only material that could be laid down near the roots of the magnificent trees in Ms. Borow’s yard. Any type of stone, concrete, or brick that is used in more typical Houston landscaping plans would have been out of the question. A patio made from these materials would have either required cutting into tree roots, or it would have impeded their future growth. The specific species chosen for ground cover also bear noting. The two primary plants used were jasmine and iris. Monkey grass was also used to a small extent as a border around the edge of the house. Irises were planted in front of the house, and the jasmine was planted beneath the trees. Both are very fast growing, drought resistant species that require very little watering. However, they do require routine pruning, which Ms. Borow said she had no problem investing in. Such lawn alternatives are frequently used in Houston landscaping projects that for one reason or the other require something other than a standard planting of carpet grass. In this case, the motivation had nothing to do with finances, but rather a conscientious effort on Ms. Borow’s part to practice water conservation and tree preservation. Other hardscapes were then introduced into this green design to better support the home architecture. A stepping stone walkway was built using plain concrete pads that are very simple and modern in their aesthetic. These lead up to the front stair case with four inch steps that Murphy Mears designed for maximum ergonomics and comfort. There were a few softscape elements that we added to complete the Houston landscaping design. A planting of River Birch trees was introduced near the side of the home. River Birch trees are very attractive, light green trees that do not grow that tall. This eliminates any possible conflict between the tree roots and the home foundation. Murphy Mears also built a very elegant fence that transitioned the geometry of the house down to the city sidewalk. The fence sharply parallels the linear movement of the house. We introduced some climbing vines to help soften the fence and to harmonize its aesthetic with that of the trees, ground cover, and grass along the sidewalk.