In Harmony with Nature… and Today's Busy Lifestyles

When one of our Williams Township clients built his home on a beautiful wooded lot nestled in a forest of mature maple and oak trees, he wanted to create harmony between the home’s stone exterior and the surrounding environment. He also wanted a design that offered both functional outdoor living space and an overall low-maintenance property.

Plantique Landscape Architect Bruce Fritzinger, RLA, met the challenges of this project, providing beauty, uniformity and practicality to the entire property with stunning results. Because the woods surrounding the home offered spectacular fall colors and interest, plants were selected for around the foundation that did not obscure the view from inside the home. Small and mid-sized perennials and shrubs were placed to frame the view instead. For year-round color and interest, evergreen boxwoods and hollies were strategically laid into the design as well.

The stone steps off the porches were created to match the home’s exterior stonework. This made a nice transition into the brick patio and driveway areas. In the front of the home, brickwork complements the clay accent work on the house, offers an attractive, hard, transitional surface between the gravel driveway and the home’s entryway and creates a sense of continuity with the brick pathways and patios that lay on all sides of the home.

Large undulating planting beds reduce the amount of lawn for a quick mowing, but offer a dramatic rolling green ribbon throughout the property that serves as a natural break between the patios, paths and foundation plantings and the berms that lead out to the woods. The space between the driveway and the woods in particular offers a mix of plant materials (including many natives) that blend into the natural surroundings in a way that blurs the line between nature and homestead.

When the property was cleared to build the home, several of the mature trees along the wood’s edge were in danger of having the soil erode from underneath them, so to combat this Plantique’s technicians carefully installed terraced banks along the edges of the clearing using boulders found on the site in a naturalized and layered formation within the backyard berm.

Even when newly installed, this intelligent landscape design manages to blend the entire home and property smoothly into its wooded environment, and it honors the homeowner’s request for low-maintenance. As time goes by, these growing assets will add both resale and personal value. That’s a true test of quality landscape design and installation, and what we strive for with every project here at Plantique.