Faced with a previous owner’s unfinished construction, which adversely altered this Beech and Oak woodland, this site design recaptured the property’s inherent beauty and restored its native ecology. Drawing from the building’s axial composition, a site structure ordering established a series of legible and integrated spaces that organized the owner’s site program.

A system of fieldstone walls reference the historic vernacular of the Connecticut countryside and manipulate the sloping topography into a sequence of outdoor rooms, lawn and stone paved terraces. Elevated overlooks and terraces bring the garden to the preserved woodland. Indigenous deciduous trees, organized as bosques and allees, provide transitions that sew back the canopy openings caused by the original aggressive clear-cutting. These geometric planting typologies visually anchor the house to its woodland context. Crabapple orchards, in conjunction with dense irregular woodland plantings, create an invisible transition between house and garden and the visually domineering Oak and Beech forest context.

American Nurseryman Association Residential Honor Award 1997