Solution

When designing gardens, we love to take potential liabilities, and turn them into opportunities. Here we simply removed the water feature, and widened/deepened the ponds/stream, creating a series of three interconnected rain-gardens, the upper-most filling, then spilling into the middle, so on to the third and lowest rain-garden. A granite monolith bridge was ordered and installed to gracefully arch over the middle rain-garden and taking you to a gate that leads onto the front courtyard patio and intimate dining space.

A new patio and path, paved in tumbled, dimensional bluestone pavers, gently rises from the edge of the driveway and transitions to the patio, eliminating the need for steps. Custom tiered, raised concrete planters were built flanking the sloping walk and provide space for screening plants by the edge of the patio. A space along the patio was created to accommodate a fountain. There is also a custom fence with horizontal boards, gapped in a unique manner with boards of varying width to allow for some sunlight to seep through but still provide privacy from the street.

At night, landscape lighting set into grade wash up the vertical, street-facing side of the fence, providing even more privacy in the evenings as well as picking up on the long, horizontal lines of the brick work and roofline of the home. 

The plantings flow effortlessly through the beds, and clearly indicate the rolling contours of the front garden, giving visual cues of the changing grade from the street and into the rain gardens. Subtle mixing of heights scale to the fence and the surrounding mature plantings to give the sense that the entire garden has existed this way from the beginning.