I started to work on this lovely property in 1998. Set in a forest of old trees, the house and landscape had that quiet woodland up-north feeling. Everything I designed for this client I kept in keeping with that feeling; few properties come with an aura as strong as this one did. A case in point; this driveway was laid out with the house in the 1920’s-and was no longer wide enough for modern vehicles. My solution? Edge the drive in small round native to Michigan granite rocks, and let the moss go to work on them. Anyone over the edge with their SUV-no harm. Do no harm-this was my organizing metaphor.
I like formal spaces in front yards, as I like a public presentation that looks good every day. All of us are very busy people-I like a landscape that can wait. But boxwood or taxus hedging seemed alien to the feel of this space. The golden vacary privet-an old plant not much in fashion since its hey day in the 50’s, seemed perfect. The chartreuse color would light up the shade. This very informal material used in a formal way, was a nod to the period and feeling of the vintage house, and its landscape.
This picture is taken from the road. Old weeping Norway spruce were planted very close and gracefully to the foundation of the house. I repeated this woodland feeling at the road-with a break, a view. A brief view.
The gold vicary described the shape of a circular sunken garden. What I love the most about the native Michigan woods are how quiet they are; no noise which is technological in origin. No radio, no cars, no jet skis, no boats-just quiet. The sound of birds, wind, footsteps-these sounds are native, natural, and good. Sinking a garden even a little intensifies the quiet. Two simple steps of grass with round rock risers-a casual, northern Michigan detail.
And the ferns? Everywhere. Ostrich ferns as a groundcover-this is a beautiful look. The texture, scale and informality is easy on the eyes, and pleasing. Drifts of ferns really interest me as a designer. They are bold and sculptural in big masses. But they speak directly to the primeval forest; the look of a stand of ferns wrings all the tension out of me.
No doubt this was a shady, mossy, quiet, not perfect, natural, woodland landscape. A grouping of funky containers and sculptures, set in groundcover on the far east perimeter, was a nod to the point of view of the client. I love a collection of objects that band together to make a sculpture. 
I wrote last Sunday in my weekly opinion post that a ride by this treasured project of mine revealed that the client has ripped most everything out, and installed a new landscape. I felt the shock that anyone feels when they come face to face with something so totally unexpected that blacking out seems an appropriate response. It took me two days to recover, but recover I did.
My clients have their own lives, and their own idea of beauty. They hire me-I am not a favorite aunt, or a Mom, or a daughter. Their lives change-I am not privy to most of that. I may be close beyond close for the duration of the project, but I am usually their fifth business. At my age, I know who I am. I appreciate that the lives of my clients are not subject to my review. I furthermore understand that my ownership of a project is while I am making it. What happens after-I am not responsible, nor am I honored. This is as it should be.
It is not my idea to critique the new landscape-that is not the point of this post. I am not interested in being a critic. I am interested in writing about my life as a designer. It is very tough to see years of work erased-no one cozies up to this. Least of all me. I am interested in history, and continuity. But I do not always get my way.
No matter how this landscape looks now, I am not unhappy about how I approached it. I have no second thoughts. I will sleep sound tonight.
Yesterday I discussed all the grading and stonework that was necessary for this project; what a relief it was to finally be putting plants in the ground! The neighborhood association belatedly decided this wall needed to be screened by plants. They apparently did not permit walls in front yards. So I planted a slew of Annabelle hydrangeas; my clients have a great view of the wall in the winter.
The upper level we did screen from the street. Houses that sit high afford little in the way of privacy. I interspersed five little leaf lindens in a hedgerow of techny arborvitae. The techny’s are dense, and slow growing. They also tolerate some shade, although the plan was to keep the lindens pruned.
Lindens belong to that group of trees that do not mind shaping. I have seen old ones not much taller than 15 feet, with densely foliated heads. My lindens at my store are boxed; they have been pruned into rectangular shapes. They are a hedge high above ground. They greatly soften the appearance of the building-originally a machine shop built in the 1940’s. These lindens I wanted to keep in scale with the house.
The house seems to sit lower than it once did. Though the front door of the house is off center, the landscape balances the space. The granite walled portion of the facade reads as a centerpiece, of which the front door is a part. The landscape making much of the bluestone staircase centers the view.
There were two issues driving the design of the upper level. How could the sidewalk gracefully turn towards the front door? The walk from the street now empties into a large rectangle of gravel; its color and size makes it read as the dominant element. The taxus viridis, naturally a very columnar yew, is planted in rows perpendicular to the house. This distracts the eye from the fact that the property in the background is dropping downhill. The techny arborvitae at the end are actually much taller than the yews-but everything reads about the same height. In time, the yews could be topped level with the horizon, thus minimizing the slope down to the west.
Eight years later, the landscape has begun to grow in. This front courtyard is private, and simple. 
I am so sorry I did not take a picture of this house before I put an excavator in the ground. Perched high above the street, a narrow concrete staircase sans rails made the journey to the front door a challenge. While this arrangement did keep away all but the most persistent visitors, the landscape was neither beautiful nor useful. This is a leave- me- alone lansdscape, is it not? My clients were interested in something very different.
Some problems cannot be solved with a shovel. An excavator made relatively fast work of cutting into the steep slope, in preparation for a wall which would divide the steep slope into two terraces, with a staircase and landing transition.
We built what I call a rubble wall. Stones of varying shapes and thicknesses are fit together to make a graceful and tightly fitted wall. This takes a person with great skill, and a great feeling for stone. My stone mason has been at this sort of thing a long time, and not incidentally, he has a gift. I would not have entrusted the job to anyone else.
Boxes of stone were delivered via a semi truck. Each lot was uncrated, sorted, and looked over, before any actual work begun. This material would not do for stairs. The staircase needed to be made of a flat stone, for easy climbing. The finished grade of the staircase would set the grades for the adjacent walls. 
The bluestone landing matched the grade of the existing sidewalk; it is very important to be sure that walkways and stairs be set exactly as people expect they are set. Not everyone watches their feet when they walk. These stairs are set exactly level with the horizon; how they appear in this picture to be crooked explains how land actually sloped away in every direction.
I was not about to ditch a lovely old magnolia in the front yard, so the finished grade had to respect the grade of that tree. No tree likes soil piled up against its trunk; changing the grade of an existing tree more than 4 or 6 inches is likely to kill it. One course of stone set at and into the grade of the upper terrace gives the illusion that the wall has great thickness and heft.
The wall slopes gracefully from the center staircase to the edges of the property. The return, or short arms of the wall, permitted me to maintain the grade to the neighboring property without interruption. A pair of antique iron railings I had acquired were retrofitted to work with the staircase. They are as lovely as they are functional. 
Not surprisingly the existing driveway was set to a grade which no longer existed. A new concrete aggregate driveway culminated in a parking area at the back of the house. There is no hiding a space like this, so I designed a stone medallion for the center. What one can’t get rid of needs a little special attention. 
I wrote a few days ago regarding my excitement about the delivery of a container load of hazel wood hurdles from Belgium; the order we placed in May finally arrived. Wattles and hurdles are panels, woven from the coppice wood of willow and hazel wood. I personally favor the heft and longevity of the hazel wood; it is vastly more durable and substantial than willow. Coppicing is the practice of cutting trees or shrubs to the quick, with the intent of harvesting the branches for fuel, or fencing. The shrub or tree regrows, only to have its branches harvested again. Woven hurdles keep the livestock out of the vegetable garden. They border herb and vegetable gardens. They provide privacy without being utterly opaque. They work wherever they are needed. Woven hurdles are a fence material friendly to a garden or landscape of any point of view.
I have a client who has become a friend; he supports Michigan industry in a big way and was so pleased these stripped cedar fence poles we bought are Michigan grown. Though I ordered 5″ diameter poles, 10 feet long, they looked like telephone poles when they got delivered from a supplier in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. As I relentlessly speak to issues of proportion, I was worried I had gone over the edge by an inch. I was wringing my hands, until the fence went up. I should not have worried. The size of the pole was perfect for the heft and texture of the fence. The bare cedar poles are a good contrast to the woven hazel wood, which has all of its bark intact.
There is no substitute for the time when the talk ends, and the making begins. We set a pole down 24″ or so below grade, and set a panel up next to it. These panels are made by hand, and vary in width somewhat. One pole, one panel, and so on. This one step at a time construction ensures that the space between two poles is fitted to a specific panel. Steve toe-nail screwed the panels to the center of each post; this is a sturdy construction. What I like even better? This fence has no back or front; the panels are the same back and front. How friendly is this to neighboring properties? This fence looks good to both sides.
I have a client who plans to screen his hot tub with this fencing. It was the subject of intense debate today-will these hurdles screen a man who is happily skinny dipping? I vote yes-unless the neighbor plans to be close enough to see through the hurdle branches. The neighbor with his nose pressed to the fence-that is the subject of another essay, is it not? The fence is also friendly to vines that need to grip to climb. Clematis grown on this fence is especially lovely. We are careful to install the fence slightly above the existing grade of the ground. Wood in constant contact with soil will deteriorate much more quickly than wood that is able to shed water.
The fence is good looking with contemporary steel ornament, traditional terra cotta pots, a funky birdbath made from recycled materials, or a formal lead cistern fountain. This is by way of saying this fence looks good with almost anything. As to its longevity, imagine how long it takes a dead tree to fall and deteriorate. Branches and twigs are not good materials for the compost pile, as they break down so slowly. We have stocked this fencing for 8 years now. I have yet to have someone tell me it had disintegrated. Wood fences do age though-that is part of their charm.