How to Make a Large Expansive Yard Feel Intimate

What neighborhoods do you most have to do this in?
Most of the largest yards in Houston are found in places such as River Oaks, Rivercrest, and Memorial. Some of these parts of the Houston landscape, due to their proximity to Buffalo Bayou and its tributaries, are also heavily wooded. Trees make a landscape look even larger than it is, so we have to develop ways of making areas of the yard appear special and unique in a way that will not harm standing trees.

What are some basic ways that you can make an expansive yard feel more intimate?
All main components of landscape design—including garden design, hardscape design, and outdoor buildings—can be used to create smaller habitable zones out of an otherwise massive property.

How do you use garden design to do this?
We can use hedges to create outdoor rooms and partition garden rooms. This may involve using very low-level ground cover to create more of an open area that is still set apart from the rest of the yard, or it may involve using taller hedges to block the view of one part of the garden to another. We would use over-sized plants to do this, or even deliberately plant species with large, shiny leaves to reflect the illumination of outdoor lighting.

How do you alter hardscape to do this?
We can add patios at different elevations. This breaks up the large scale and creates different seating areas and focal points. On Houston landscapes surrounding more contemporary-style homes, we can plant modern gardens in the center of a large patio that has been “staggered” in this fashion.

On more traditional landscape designs, we can build a custom fountain.
Still another technique that we use is to create paving with large scale stone. Using very large stones to build a relatively small patio distorts one’s sense of perspective in a way as to concentrate the attention of the eye more on the patio than the surrounding Houston landscape. How do you construct outdoor buildings?
Outdoor buildings are more sophisticated structures than outdoor rooms. An outdoor building typically has three full-sized walls and a roof. The positioning of two or more of these structures can be pivotal to the aesthetic impact of the entire yard.

An outdoor living room, for example, can be built in a garden, thus breaking up the view from space to space. Or, an arbor can be built between a luxury swimming pool and an outcropping of trees in the back yard to create the sense of separation between refined outdoor living space and more open natural space.
What special or ornamental features are used?
In courtyard design where we rely primarily upon organic elements to create partitions and walls, we often use outdoor curtains to section off all or part of the courtyard from the rest of the Houston landscape. These curtains can be made to work just like indoor curtains so they can be partly opened to other parts of the yard to create something of a window-like effect.

In portions of the yard where patios and custom hardscapes predominate a large Houston landscape, large-scale planters can be built to either run parallel to home walls, architectural walls, or elevated patios. They can also be integrated into more sophisticate hardscapes such as outdoor fireplaces and custom fountains.