Recognized by the Western Pennsylvania Horticultural Society in the Landmark Gardens Tour, 2006. Here (in Beaver, PA), some of our goals were to capitalize on the architecture of the new home and to contrast with the wider landscape of the river directly across the street. The well-traveled and particular clients are art collectors and avid gardeners, so constant color was important, in a palette that reflected their zest for life.

The Dwarf Korean boxwood parterre's design was inspired by the stained glass windows on the front door, and is enjoyed best from the breakfast table above. This garden is filled with late blooming tulips in hot pink and pink, and later, ever-blooming "Knock Out roses." The cast iron urn (on a plinth) that we found for a focal point is nearly engulfed in a sea of "Six Hills Giant" catmint. We have to beat it into submission twice a year when it threatens to completely obscure it, but the effect is worth the nuisance of the fifteen minute "haircut!"

The backyard garden invites birds to a handmade birdhouse, which we selected and brought in from Canada, and then custom painted to use as a support for the climbing roses. Our custom-designed and hand-built cedar screen repeats the design of the parterre and the stained glass front doors, creating harmony. "Blushing Pink" Knock Out roses scramble through it. We planted hydrangeas, roses, perennial geraniums, hostas, lupines and lady's mantle in large groupings to evoke the wide brush strokes seen in paintings. Now what was a jarring "landscape" is a set of gardens as exuberant as the home's inhabitants. We are so grateful that we are still permitted to maintain the grounds, as we've grown as attached to the clients as we were to their gardens! 

Our commanding client, Claire, first found us in our booth at the Pittsburgh Home and Garden Show. When she greeted us at her beautiful farm, she asked us to choose a ground cover for a weed-infested hill. This merited attention, but we were excited and anxious to adorn the stone, Federal farmhouse with true gardens and outdoor living spaces instead. At the time, it was surrounded by poorly graded lawns, and it was impossible to approach the front door without walking uphill, on grass.

Our client visited our gardens to get a sense of our abilities, and decided to take what she called "a leap of faith" to see what we could do. From that moment, she has given us the generous gift of free rein. This has allowed us to design and install without a single compromise. She permitted us to purchase the most mature plants available (so that the gardens would look like they had always been there on the day we installed them) and to select unusual varieties, even if we had to bring them in from Northern California!

We were careful to construct the gardens in a way that harmonized with the period of the unique and historical home, while expressing our client's color preferences for pastel colors with bright pink accents, and her desire for a continuous succession of bloom. The first garden we installed is a parterre "pleasure garden," which functions as an outdoor living room overlooking the pond. Our client not only has geese, but also has swans! We installed very old, large, sandstone steps leading from the pleasure garden to the front door.