Rathbun Residence

This project was a new construction with a "blank slate" as far as the yard went and was my largest design project to date. There were a lot of different requirements for this landscape:

• a 6' wide path encircling the entire yard 
• an extensive windbreak to stem the winds and protect the house that was on top of one of our Palouse hills
• a chicken coop and run
• a goat shed and small pasture
• a place for an orchard
• space in the yard for a possible pool some many years down the road
• a large garden space
• an area designated for a play structure

And all of this on top of the normal differences in slope/soil moisture/sun exposure/drainage that are present on every site and the normal requests for relatively low maintenance year-round interest. There were also 360 degree views of the Palouse landscape that had to be preserved, but also a desire to create a little hilltop oasis with a fair number of trees. I used over 120 plant varieties and there were probably between 400 and 600 plants total in the design, ranging from little 4" perennials to large conifers.

I've ordered the plans from the back of the house to the front, or the south to west to northwest to northeast sides of the house. I had a master plan to present to the client that included everything (including the larger trees which are shown in these drawings as simple fine-lined circles), but it was about 24"x36" and wouldn't fit onto my scanner, so I don't have a digital copy of it to show here.

South Corner

This first plan is off of the back of the garage and near the back deck that comes off of the kitchen. This is where the garden area is for easiest access. The goat shed and chicken coop are just to the south of the path, not pictured here. The orchard wraps around the goats and chickens.

The garden is designed as a series of raised beds laid out in a radial pattern from the center of an ornamental planting bed. I was visualizing the raised beds of Williamsburg when I did this, and trying to create a garden area that was functional as well as aesthetically pleasing.

West Corner

This plan is oriented differently (note the north arrow), so if you're trying to figure out how they all mesh, just imagine it rotated ninety degrees counter-clockwise.

This is the "playground corner". This was one section of the yard that could be filled with trees and wouldn't block any views, so I squeezed seven in here. There are maples, a concolor fir, a columnar oak, and large lilac trees. They also served to shade the play area and create a slightly secluded little patio off of the play area where the adults could sit and watch the kids play.

Northwest Side

This was probably my favorite section of the yard to work on, as it had the most variety of unique little spaces to design for.

The path that encircled the yard was designed to accommodate the clients' young daughter who is disabled and requires the help of crutches, a walker, or a scooter to get around. They wanted a "loop" that she could ride her scooter on all around the yard. One thing I wanted to be careful of was just putting the path around the yard to frame it - I didn't want her to feel like she was on the outside of everything, but rather like she could be in it and a part of everything that was going on out in the yard. So as you may have noticed in the previous drawing, her path goes between the yard and the playground, and in the first drawing her path goes between the yard and the animals so that she could be right in the thick of it.

In this section of the yard I put a planting bed in the middle of the path specifically for her so that she could have access to the entire thing. From the SW end to the NE end there is about a 3' elevation rise, so the idea for this planter is that at the SW end it would be raised up to 3' above the path and have a little built in bench for her to lean up against and work in her very own garden. The planter then remains level as the path around it rises and once you get to the NE end the planter is level with the path. This planter is filled with strawberries, blueberries, crabapple trees, flowering plants, and some open space for Cecily to do what she wants with. 

To the east of Cecily's planter there is a slope between the path and the lawn above which will be filled with boulders, Nearly Wild roses, and caryopteris for soil stabilization. Just to the northwest of this across the path is a somewhat swampy area of the yard (due to drainage) so this planting bed includes the pussy willow that the client requested as well as some winterberry hollies for cutting.

For the planter in the NE corner of the drawing, I started with three Butterfly Magnolias and an Arnold's Promise Witch Hazel to enclose the patio area. These were underplanted with some small decorative shrubs and perennials. I also included a small area for a garden ornament (bird bath, small fountain, etc.), surrounded by a circular bed of low-growing Liriope and Black Mondo grass. The Liriope has grassy green "leaves" with small, elegant, dark purple flowers while the Black Mondo grass is a deep deep purple (almost black), so the contrast should be stunning.

Front Yard

The front yard is the shadiest, being on the northeastern side of the house. The small perennial border along the front porch is made up of hostas, bleeding hearts, small rhododendrons, lady's mantle, clematis, and other part-sun and shade loving plants.

The planting bed between the yard and the path has large shade trees, conifers, and decorative understory trees carefully placed to frame the views of Moscow Mountain, the city of Moscow, and the surrounding Palouse from the front porch. There are also many shrubs selected to give year-round interest between the path and the yard.

Windbreak

The final portion of the landscape is the windbreak. The biggest difficulty with windbreaks is how painfully long it takes to get them really established. One solution to this is to plant an initial row of fast growing trees (in this case the 42 hybrid poplars, labeled "HP" in the drawing) that will provide some fast relief. These trees would be gradually thinned over a period of about 10 years, during which time they should give the pines, tamarack, and hardwoods on the leeward side a chance to get established.

The goal with this windbreak was to make it attractive as well as functional. While there are distinct rows, the rows are made up of a variety of plants that are staggered to create a more natural look. The tallest row is comprised of austrian pines and western larches, followed by the deciduous row of paper birches, maples, walnuts, and oaks. This row is then followed by a shorter row of serviceberry, hawthorn, and lilac, finished off by a row of purple sand cherries. On the windward side of the starter row of poplars is a row of serviceberry and/or chokecherry, and then about fifty feet beyond that is what is called the "snow-trap" row made up of more serviceberries. The snow-trap row serves to catch the majority of the drifting snow between itself and the main body of the windbreak, whereas without it the snow would pile up on the leeward side of the windbreak along where the sand cherries are. 

You can see that windbreaks are not small things. This one (which is actually fairly basic) is more than 100 feet wide and at least 200 feet long. There are usually two challenges associated with installing a windbreak; first is the cost of the plants (there are about 175 plants in this windbreak), and the second is the chore of watering them so that you don't lose them all. In designing this windbreak I mostly used plants that could be found through the University of Idaho Center for Forest Nursery and Seedling Research catalog as root plugs for $2.00 a piece (or $1.80 a piece if you order more than 200). This could end up saving 90% of what one might pay at a normal nursery or home improvement store for plants that are just a little bit bigger. As far as watering the investment, the best means is a good drip irrigation system. The set-up would take some time, but in the long run would be such a time saver and would prevent the loss of so many plants.

I thoroughly enjoyed working on this plan and figuring out how to put all of the puzzle pieces together in  a way that fit perfectly and would look amazing. I pulled out all the stops when it came to plant selection and used everything in my arsenal and even made extra trips to local nurseries when I was running out of ideas for plants to use. As I said, this was my largest project to date but it was also one of the most enjoyable plans I have ever done.

Time: 35 hours

Current Project

This is a project I am currently working on. I like to have as much info as I can before I even get on site and I find that that generally makes the site visit the most productive. I compiled this base map from some basic GPS mapped plot lines given by the client and then printed out a topographic map from Google Earth to the same scale and traced. It's also very helpful to have cleanly drawn lines rather than the highly pixelated ones that you tend to get when printing off small sections of USGS topographic maps!

Casa Wallace

This was a project that I did for school almost 8 years ago. I had the privilege of studying in Italy for 6 weeks over the summer and we stayed at an amazing little villa/winery while we were there. One of our projects was to create a comprehensive plan for the villa and vineyards that included some wetland reclamation, garden space, an increased number of paths throughout the property, a children's garden, a grotto at the site of the old pool, and other requirements. Living in the space you're designing for is an enjoyable but sometimes overwhelming experience.

Two areas that we concentrated on were the courtyards at the villa. One was completely paved and enclosed on three sides by the villa itself, with the owner's private residence partially covering the fourth side. It got incredibly hot in this courtyard, so I added a fountain with night-lighting and some edge plantings to soften the harsh lines of the space.

The second courtyard was bounded on one side by the villa and the rest was surrounded by an old wall with a little terra cotta roof that was as charming as it was unnecessary. They didn't have a lot of water for irrigation, so I used brick pavers and pea gravel set in organic lines  and curving shapes to create a more "natural" feeling environment and added a few strategically placed berms of native plants to make the sparse plantings more visible. 

As an aside, if you're looking for a place to stay in the Piedmont region of Italy, you can stay here. Visit their website here.

Littlejohn Residence

This project was a recent construction with very minimal existing landscaping. The clients wanted two basic things - a plan for some quick fixes that could be done to improve the look of the property, and a more long term plan of things that they could implement over the next few years.

Here are the drawings for the quick fixes which were basically the entryway planter at the end of the driveway and the planting bed right next to the entrance to the house.



Here are the drawings for the long term plan. These included a border along the east side of the property, some slope solutions on the southwest corner, and then the installation of an informal playing field in the lower back yard.




Time: 15 hours

Nightingale Residence

This project was a new construction with some significant slopes to deal with. The front and back yards were flat, but the back yard was a good 10' below the front yard, and then there was a large slope down from the back yard to the rear property line. The theme of the front yard was mostly "cottage garden" with lots of perennials and flowering shrubs.



The North Side (the North Slope) was going to be the least used portion of the yard, so we kept it simple, low maintenance, with some drough tolerant plants.


The South Side was more visible so we put in more perennials and shrubs.


I usually abhor junipers, but sometimes they really are the best option. This back slope was steep, and with a small shrub border along the top, it was not going to be visible from anywhere else in the yard (and barely noticeable from the house). Junipers were a cheap, easy, no maintenance solution. They would be able to survive from the run-off that the sprinklers on the lawn above gave.

Time: 18 hours

McDonald Landscape

This project was a bit unique in that the clients wanted mostly ideas, rather than specific measured plans. There was a lot of property to work with (it's a dairy farm) and a lot of new issues to tackle. For this client, I put together a book of my sketches and suggestions. It's a bit difficult to show online, but what I did was print pages with the picture of the problem area, and then I printed an overlay on transparent vellum that included my suggestions and the sketches of how I envisioned the area after the improvements. Here are three of the fifteen areas I put together suggestions for, with the picture page on the left, and the transparency on the right (you'll just have to imagine the right pages laid over the left ones).




At the end of the book was a list of recommended plants for the clients to use divided by type (perennials, small shrubs, large shrubs.)

Time: 12 hours

K. Johnson Front Planter

This client had a house with mature landscaping that needed a bit of revamping. The big trouble spot was a planter in the front of the house. Here's a photo of what was there, and the sketch of my suggestions.

Vaux Landscape

This project was a new home so I had a clean slate to start with. The first priority for the homeowner was a plant screen across the back fence to block the view of the houses that were going to be built behind them. Here's a photo of what I was to screen...


This is the sketch of my ideas that I presented to the homeowner...


They liked the design, and so I went ahead and drew up a plan for the entire yard. Here is what the plan for the backyard looked like...

(click on the picture for a larger image)

Morrin Border

This project was a border designed to block out the view of a new subdivision while preserving the view of Moscow Mountain from the back porch of the residence. Most plants had to be about 10' tall, and they all had to be narrow as there was an existing garden only a few feet away along most of the property line. The border was highly visible from the house, so a lot of seasonal plants were used to provide interest year-round.


Time: 4.5 hours