A stunning new home and landscape reinvent a dated ranch-style developer property for outdoor-focused, contemporary living in urban Brookline, near the Emerald Necklace and Fenway Park. The active family requested a landscape fusing “California-style outdoor living” with New England.

Beautifully textured board-form concrete retaining walls elevate the new front garden, with a fantastic porch and steel vine structure overlooking the busy streetscape. Boldly contrasting native plants provide foliage displays that soften hard edges with texture and movement. Terraces in the rear are positioned to enjoy both sun and shade. And multiple creative stormwater management strategies resolve sensitive drainage problems throughout.

The work illustrates simple concepts that can be replicated at any scale and budget—a model of easy living in an intense urban place vexed by extreme weather and limited plant options. This project brings calm and order to a previously neglected space and draws the family outdoors.

2015 International Gold Award from the Association of Professional Landscape Designers
2014 Merit Award from the Boston Society of Landscape Architects
2014 Selected Exhibitor for Suburbia Transformed from James Rose Center

Collaborators: Stern McCafferty Architecture and Interiors, Brite Builders, Martin Lucyk Landscape Construction, Corbett Irrigation, Stone Farm, Select Horticulture, Artemesia Perennial Supply, Didrick’s