Awards

Landscape Design and Installation Awards

Cottage Retreat

To have a client with a dream is the best kind, one who can visualize the dream plan and is willing to follow it through. The challenge was to design a large year-round enjoyed property that envelops three age groups- A child under 10, 2 young adult men and the owners a middle-age couple, giving them space for themselves and creating rooms where they will come together in relaxed comfort. 

Working with Muskoka sand, we began by bringing in truckloads of organic rich composted soil, creating butterfly gardens along the stone break wall, above the beach, meandering in front of the bunkhouse and cottage that continuously flows along the perimeter. We used many sizes of stone to make it appear natural, as if it had always been there. Home also to a young child- it was important that the landscape be useable for her as well so we created a child’s fairy tale secret garden safely beyond the water. Some wooden playground equipment was then added into nature’s largest sandbox. The outdoor living room was designed with a granite fireplace as the focal point. Large granite flagstone and pea gravel make the patio surface warm and colourful. Gardens surround the sitting room for fragrant ambience privatizing it from the upper patio. On the upper level, we wanted to do something completely different, something very natural, but with a twist. We designed a flagstone pathway with creeping thyme traveling between the stones leading to the French pebble mat carpet. These new indoor/ outdoor mats worked perfectly. Using pins and sand to stabilize them, it made a refreshingly unique place to sit and play a game at the outdoor concrete checkerboard table-Or to indulge a sunbathing fantasy. Furnishings finished off the job with a tropical tiki umbrella and bar set at the shoreline, inviting guests off the boat for a shady rest.

On Lake Muskoka, the front door is off the water’s edge. Designed by Sculptor Brett Davis this one of a kind bronze water-feature, ‘The Pelican, (known as the story teller)’  greets everyone who arrives by boat, telling the story of a shipwreck from long ago, who watches over the only remaining artifact, the original iron anchor. 

A Sunken Retreat
 
Many clients that we design for express privacy issues- they want to be able to dine or enjoy their gardens without the worry of on-looking neighbours. For this particular customer, there was the additional challenge that her home is on the corner lot, with both her back and front yard exposed to passersby. Her neighbourhood was changing. The original subdivision homeowners were down- sizing and new families with small children were moving in. Melanie, who lives alone and often works from home, did not like the fact that her personal backyard had become the soccer field or the public park in the neighbourhood. Not wanting to move or relocate she needed a wise plan quickly. A deck would have brought her even higher off the ground and more visible to people. The solution was to surround and envelop her rooms with mature evergreens, using a mix of deciduous trees and then an under-planting of perennials and shrubs. We constructed many rooms each with a different purpose – each room changing elevations, furniture and plant materials. Our favourite, a “sunken retreat,” is a little hidden oasis that she loves.