In The Field: 1958 Contemporary Garden Nears Completion

This project in Greenville, Delaware left the drawing board in the summer of 2012 and as 2013 rings in, the owners are seeing their vision of maximizing the usefulness of their property become a reality. The contractors broke ground shortly after Labor Day and Maffei Landscape Design has been working closely with the owner and the site supervisor to assure every detail is properly tended to.

 Because of careful planning and lots of experience on the part of the contractor, the work has flowed very smoothly from one trade to another, and there is just about every trade working on this site. Masons, plumbers, electricians, carpenters, painters as well as excavators, metal fabricators and, yes, horticulturists have shared the small space with great efficiency. Once spring arrives with its warmer temperatures and availability of the remainder of the plant list, the final touches will be placed on the garden and the owners will have their home to themselves again.


We have prepared a detailed record of the entire project with step by step photographs and descriptions on our Facebook page. Click here to go directly to the album, or visit http://www.facebook.com/MaffeiLandscapeDesign .

In The Field: Federal Style in York, Pennsylvania

The parking court walls have been constructed, continuing the theme set by the architecture.

The relocated American boxwood frame the front
facade while maintaining a sense of maturity.

The extended brick wall seems to finish
the intent of the original.

Solid progress is being made on this renovation project which is a collaboration between Maffei Landscape Design, the owner, the builder and the landscape contractor. 

The water feature has been formed and poured
 as a custom fit to the existing wall.

The builder's expertise and familiarity with the house has enabled him to produce a virtually seemless transition into the constructed portions of the landscape, including the extension of the brick wall in the back yard, modifying the front door and stoop, realignment of the driveway and the construction of the parking court walls. 

The landscape contractor relocated the 6' American boxwoods per the Master Plan to allow better views of the front facade and is constructing the water feature nestled into the existing brick wall.

In The Field: Prairie Style Nears Completion

With the weather being less than an ally this year, progress has been measured in stops and starts, but we are near the finale. The most recent progress involved fine tuning some details on existing stone work, creating new rock "outcroppings", bed preparation and installation of plants.

Autumn descends on the newly planted garden

A detail overlooked by the masons that worked on the house itself was the treatment of the edges of the Pennsylvania bluestone at the foyer and entry terrace. While the tops of the stone have a lightly textured, dimpled finish, the edges were sporting a very uncouth saw cut that looked raw and incomplete in contrast to the adjoining face.

Unfinished bluestone edge

The solution to this problem is "flaming" as described in an earlier post. This involves extreme heating of the stone surface with an acetylene torch to the point that a thin layer of stone shatters with its sudden, heat-induced expansion. Our masonry subcontractor was careful to protect the surrounding area with a heavy and quite disposable sheet of plywood while he performed this task. The sound of hissing gas and exploding rock made me think of being inside a giant popcorn popper, as I silently prayed that only the intended edges were the things exploding.

Joe artfully demolishes one millimeter of bluestone

Cardboard boxes fill in for shrubs

Quick digital manipulation aids decisions

The bluestone was not the only thing in the garden having its edges tended to. The intersection of the garden with the cul-de-sac also needed some attention, with the driving motive of making this huge circle of asphalt seem a little less imposing. We studied this at length from many angles, both inside and outside the house. The images show the view through the dining room window and the street. The cardboard boxes are a mock-up of where shrubs might be placed to soften the visual impact of the street, while some quick photo manipulation aided us in imagining the final appearance of the improvements on approach to the house. This exercise ultimately led us to the conclusion that this area of the garden needed more of a backstory to avoid it appearing trite and one-dimensional, so we expanded upon the stone theme prevalent not only on the property, but in the surrounding cultural landscape that features boulders and natural stone constructions. Large, flat slabs of indigenous rock were scouted at a nearby quarry and tagged by the owner and myself, and placed in the garden to simulate the fractured leading edge of a massive and largely buried geologic formation. Care was taken to place the boulders to suggest eons of imperceptible, tectonic plate-like movement, while opportunistic witchhazels (Hamamelis x intermedia 'Primavera') and stonecrop (Sedum ternatum) leap into the resulting gaps.

Stone slabs suggest a buried geologic formation

With the constructed elements installed and the heavy equipment out of the way, we turned our attention to the improvement of the soil and installation of plants. The aesthetic of the front yard was envisioned to balance the man-made with the natural, pairing recognizable geometric shapes, such as rectangles (in the case of the house), circles and arcs with natural plant communities such as those found in local woodlands and stream banks. While the plant list does not strictly demand Mid-Atlantic or even North American natives, the selections do embrace naturalistic or naturalized species that do not possess any weedy, invasive tendencies. Sod was used for the lawn installation to provide instant erosion control and expedite aesthetic gratification.

Soil conditioning, planting and mulching in progress

Epimedium 'Sulphureum' is planted between the heavy steppers

Installing Sedum ternatum at the stone outcropping

Plants were selected and placed to suggest natural communities, with sod providing instant erosion control. 

In The Field: Prairie Style in Wilmington

Our residential project in Wilmington, Delaware began last week and good progress is being made. The landscape contractor, like most others in the area this fall, has been struggling with deferred scheduling since the rains in August and September have wreaked havoc on their ability to get work done, but they are more than making up for it with a methodical, professional work ethic that is very efficient.

The heavy stepping stones (made of Pennsylvania Blue Granite) mentioned in an earlier post were picked up from the quarry and delivered to the site.The holes at the edges are from the "plug and feather" technique used to split each stepping stone from its parent slab. The tops of each stone were "flamed", meaning that the quarryman used an acetylene torch to heat up the stone surface until it shattered, resulting in a very uniform, dimpled, non-slip surface. In order to facilitate their placement relative to the drawing, I marked each stone with chalk, indicating their dimension.

We began placing stones in the back yard and worked our way towards the front. This beefy 72"x18"x6" hunk of rock weighs about 900 pounds and was set on a bed of stone dust to ensure a level, stable base at the foot of the deck.

The design for the stepping stones was inspired by Japanese plank foot bridges that can be found traversing ponds, rice paddies and iris fields, so each stone was set with safety in mind, but with the intention that the visitor would have to look down to appreciate the garden, allowing them to see the perennials growing below and creating a greater sense of space and journey in the otherwise short and narrow space.

We left this stump in place for several reasons. One was that we (the owner and I) could not come up with a compelling reason to expend the resources necessary to remove it. What would that afford us? One more shrub? Six more perennials? Not worth it. Another reason was that the owner is an avid bird watcher, and this stump is home for hundreds of tasty little bugs for the birds to eat, thus attracting the birds closer to the house. A third reason was that the stump represented a reason for the path to change direction, thus making the path more interesting since it makes an intentional and purposeful  shift to the side.

As we moved closer to the front and the connection with the main entrance terrace, the ground sloped upwards and the stepping stones were set to follow the grade. Because of their thickness (6-9") the steppers were easily set into the ground as "stairs".

Next week we will continue around the front with the installation of the "boulder outcropping" and witchhazel screen, along with bed preparation and the installation of plants.