SUBURBAN JUNGLE
BROOKLINE, MASSACHUSETTS
Inspired by the tangled and diverse jungles of Brazil, our intrepid clients imagined their suburban .39-acre property in Brookline, Massachusetts could grow more than just lawn. Together with the design team, the clients established three goals for their landscape: create a dense forest that evokes the jungles of their homeland, Brazil; earnestly address its impact on the broader watershed and ecosystem; and explore a new model of suburban landscape stewardship.
Contrasting the typical suburban surroundings, the design team drew on the client’s spirit of adventure to devise a tropically dense garden, rich in seasonal drama and native diversity, that climbs the site’s thirty feet of grade change and weaves a sinuous path network around the home. Enveloped by stands of birch and serviceberry, meandering fieldstone steps set the tone at arrival. A boulder-strewn path wanders through masses of low sumac branches and glades of sun-dappled winterberry. At the house, an elevated linear boardwalk flanked by maple, birch, and cedar contrasts the serpentine path below. The boardwalk’s rope balusters suggest life in a treehouse—an aesthetic carried throughout the house with its interior two-story garden atrium at its center. A trail wraps around the home to a terrace where hay-scented fern, rhododendrons, and grasses create a lush space for family gathering nestled within the garden. Rocky trails climb through dense undergrowth up to the site’s summit where a fire pit overlooks the canopy and Brookline Reservoir below. While the material design aims to evoke Brazil, it is distinctly Bostonian; and while the spatial arrangement offers seclusion, it also celebrates connection to the reservoir. The Suburban Jungle simultaneously transports and embeds, giving the clients a taste of home by celebrating their locality.
Uphill of the Brookline Reservoir, the project required several methods of water retention on site to reduce downhill runoff and off-site water consumption. All paving on site is permeable, covering only 10% of the lot, while 76% of the site is vegetated. A recharge trench and cistern collect roof runoff, holding up 10,000 gallons of water. These surface and subsurface elements ensure that 86% of the site area infiltrates nearly 100% of runoff. Further, 92% of the chosen plant species are drought tolerant. These design strategies collectively minimize the need for irrigation, the use of municipal water, and the potential for surface runoff to pollute the reservoir below. These strategies also helped the project earn LEED Platinum status in 2017—a new suburban ethic was born.
This re-envisioned yard has offered the design team and clients opportunities to rethink suburban stewardship. Far from routinized lawn mowing, maintaining the Suburban Jungle requires observation and restraint. Since installation, the landscape has evolved like a successional forest: sun-loving shrubs and perennials have been shaded out by the expanding canopy. Immersed in this forest microcosm, the clients are now negotiating the ever-shifting experience of living as part of a plant community. As such, maintenance is now improvisational, responding to seasonal and multi-year changes. This domestic landscape has resulted in a stewardship model that necessarily integrates the client with their context, demonstrating that deep relationships between people and nature can happen even in one’s own back yard.
Collaborators: Ike Kligerman Barkley, Myles Katz Architect, Select Horticulture, WF Landscape Services, Simon Upton Photography
2023 International Gold Award from the Association of Professional Landscape Designers
2022 Residential Award of Excellence from the Boston Society of Landscape Architects