Heights Landscaping

A Heights family contacted us and hired us to design them an Italian garden with a number of corresponding decorations and functional elements that would support a Classical design theme. The house itself was perfect for this project because it was built with very Old World architecture to begin with. It was a two-story home that had a porch and an upstairs balcony in the front. Stairs led up to the porch, and the windows were decorated with large shutters. Just next to the house grew a very large and stately old oak—ideal for concealing a tree light to illuminate the entire roof of the structure and showcasing throughout the night the European look and feel we intended to create.

The lights that we hid in the oak tree provided more than enough lighting for the roof, balcony, and windows. To light the porch, we concealed fixtures under the eaves to light the walking surfaces, steps, walls, and downstairs windows. In the front area surrounding the oak tree, we planted a small Italian garden with a variety of ground cover plant species, shrubbery, and smaller, ornamental trees. This added an organic feeling to the angular symmetry of the house. We then completed the first phase of our project by placing urns on either side of the stairway leading up to the front porch. This lent a sense of Classical grand entryway that, although technically Roman nonetheless remains consistent with the theme of an Italian garden in form, proportion, and placement.

Because the house itself had been built more toward the front of the lot, there was a great deal of property behind the home that gave us plenty of room to integrate organic, functional, and decorative elements of an Italian garden. The first thing we created for our clients was a planter, built in the shape of a small wall just tall enough to sit on. This wall followed the contour of the rear of the home, and provided both a place to plant greenery, and sufficient room to comfortably sit and have coffee, conversation, or a quick read of the morning paper.

Just beyond this planter, we then built a water fountain in a design consistent with the architecture and general layout of the property. All Italian gardens work to support the linear movement of architecture, so the design we chose was a simple rectangle whose decorative appeal was enhanced with lighting and water jets. In the evening, four water spouts spray upward with the light dancing between them.

To further compliment linear design and right angles, we built a limestone patio around the water fountain. The limestone pavers actually began at the base of the planter, and were slightly sloped on that end toward concealed, 1-inch drain channel to provide water runoff. It was constructed with a blend of hardscape and softscape that created the illusion of it stretching past the fountain and fading away into the grass. This helped the patio blend harmoniously with the Italian cypress we planted in the garden, and complimented the handmade pottery we interspersed among both organic and inorganic designs.

To create a sense of enclosure and destination for our new Italian garden, we built a fully functional garden arbor at the far end of the property. This area had previously been obscured by the unsightly appearance rising out of an adjacent commercial lot behind the property. The new wooden arbor, built over a limestone patio with Permacast columns and a cedar roof, worked to partly block the view of this building. To further draw the eye away from it, we added a rather innovative feature in addition to the standard lighting and ceiling fans we normally build in our arbors. We placed a mirror on the back wall that reflected the patio in front of the arbor and the Italian garden that stretched all the way back to the fountain and the planter. Like all mirrors do, this had the unconscious effect of making the property look a little larger and more self-contained within its own boundaries. Then, to complete the project with an extra touch of comfort and elegance for guests, we decorated the patio and placed chairs and tables in front of the arbor that would give seated guests a good view of the Italian cypress, the fountain, and lighted interior of the arbor.