Refreshment for living

The residential clients wanted a revised patio area with a built-in grill/outdoor kitchen space. The interior
living areas face the back yard, so they desired to connect the inside and outside attractively, as
well as create a focal point from their living room. They also wanted the front of the house to be enhanced, and a gate installed from the backyard entrance. Overall, notes Huffman, "They wanted an updated, fresh look to the place."

For example, a narrow paver walk curved up to the front door. He decided to give it some structure by adding a soldier course paver border and backed it up with a crisp boxwood hedge. "We revised the rockwork retaining and added access from the front walk to the lawn," he says. "These items — the walkway, the hedge and the embedded limestone — provide a sturdy, somewhat rigid backbone for the rest of the front landscape to flow around in layered waves of planting."

It is quite shady behind the house, and the hill slopes down toward the rear walls of the home. Before work commenced, Huffman recalls how a narrow deck was built into the hillside, running parallel with the back of the house and giving the overall impression of a dark, narrow hallway. The deck was split into two levels and the wood was wearing out, both physically and aesthetically. He and the team used shade to their advantage, as seen beneath this Norway spruce, by using such plantings as 'Thorndale' English ivy and Chocolate Chip Ajuga.

To make the most of the narrow rear yard, Huffman and the team took an angled approach to the design. "We were hemmed in by hillside and a close setback line," he explains. "The far corner of our client’s bedroom is the beginning of the neighbor’s house, so space for screening was limited as well." By rotating the framework of the design on a 45-degree angle, a sense of larger space was discovered, and the creation of three distinct rooms emerges in this view: first, the focal point fountain disc directly in view from the living room; next,
the grilling center; and finally, the spa right out from the master bedroom doors.