Landscaping with Water: Native Plant Garden, Patio and Natural Swimming Pond Where Heaven Smiles Designing, developing and constructing this landscape has truly been a labor of love! We are so fortunate in Westchester to have such naturally beautiful settings to work with! In this case we had a wide open rear yard which served as a blank canvas for our artistic composition to unfold. Situated on a tidal estuary facing southeast, we found a perfect opportunity for improving the landscape ecology in a post Sandy world. Starting by a well developed landscape concept plan, we conceived of a dynamic composition who’s unifying theme was nature, native plants for birds and butterflies and a fresh water swimming pool with a stream, waterfall and lovely bog garden as a bio-filter and landscape feature. Originally a wooden deck was proposed but changed to a custom masonry patio (as a result of permitting issues). As always, storm water management played an important role in design development and construction methods. In addition to excavating a large volume of poor quality fill and construction debris from the site we also employed decompation, soil amendments, sub-grade piping and drainage as well as vertical trenching and mulching for the tree roots. State of the art technologies were employed with the help of Conservation Technology, Baltimore, MD.(www.conservationtechnology.com), for the unique natural swimming pond and water feature. We even created a shady moss garden with material supplied by our good friends at Sticks and Stones Farm in Newtown, Connecticut (www.sticksandstonesfarm.com). The word heavenly came up frequently by visitors to this stunning one of a kind landscape and has been described as one of the towns best landscapes/gardens. Everything starts with an idea, a dream, a desire…in this case we were lucky enough to have a client would believed and invested in us with full faith and trust. A truly marvelous experience all around. This is truly a model of ecological landscaping and an example of Green landscape design. We will be maintaining this property, naturally, sustainably, organic, with great pride! [Below: BEFORE photo]
