Barrington Hills Estate
The commanding views from this home demanded a bold approach to the landscape design.  To deter deer grazing, walled gardens were created near the home.  A loose, casual style of planting softens and enlivens the hard-edged terraces and garden walls, creating a colorful foreground environment in contrast to the surrounding natural scenery.


 

Highland Park Estate
A common buckthorn thicket on five acres provided a secluded rural feel for this suburban property, but blocked sunlight from reaching the understory and severely limited the site’s botanical diversity. An existing wetland and stream channel, both indigenous to the site, inspired a series of naturalistic garden settings.  The thicket was removed wherever possible to allow for new flowering meadow and grassy prairie plantings, as well as a stone-surrounded swimming pool and play lawn.  (Note: see Garden Design Magazine, April 2007 issue, for a feature on this award-winning garden.)

 

Hinsdale Estate
The classic architecture and configuration of the outdoor spaces required these garden areas to be effusive with softness and romance.  A strict color scheme, requested by the clients, is apparent in these summer images.




 

Lake Forest Estate (1)
An historic house with historic garden “bones” were the givens of this project.  The loving owners of this property wanted to renovate the original gardens, using a less maintenance-intensive planting scheme than the original early 20th century design. Over time, the sunny garden had become shaded by the surrounding trees, so a pure restoration was not possible.  The lower garden is planted with the owner-preferred palette of pale blues and purples, and is now protected from deer by a surrounding hedge of Hornbeam. 
(For more information on this garden, please click on the NorthShore Magazine link under the “Of Special Interest” section of our website.)
 

Lake Forest Estate (2)
Historically significant home and gardens on bluff overlooking Lake Michigan, with sensitive new additions and renovations. Fragments of the original garden suggested the overall plan, with new garden themes and plant combinations throughout. Rose- and vine-covered arbors, sheared topiary and carefully clipped espalier, stone and gravel paving with brick walls and curbs – all provide structure for this lushly-planted garden. The owner’s collection of well-chosen containers, furniture, and garden ornament personalizes each garden room.
 

Lake Forest Estate (3)
An historic coach house and rear acreage of an older estate were adapted to create a new estate landscape with the charm and patina of age. The relaxed formality and Arts and Crafts design traditions that permeate Lake Forest can be found in this secluded gem, with garden architecture and plantings designed to carefully integrate with the home. The restrained simplicity of a gravel motor court conceals the colorful gardens behind the house, developed in linear fashion with a raised vine-covered arbor at one end, and a sunlit open lawn at the other.
 

Lake Forest Estate (4)
A reinterpretation of an historic garden that had fallen into decline.  The 85 feet long by 12 feet wide borders have a brilliant color scheme inspired by the entry hall wallpaper of the home.




 

Libertyville Estate
A classic country place, miraculously preserved by sensitive owners. Our charge was to renovate the historic gardens, enhancing remnant features with period-appropriate plantings accented with garden ornament and antiques. Wood planter boxes filled with hardy hydrangeas line the walks to twin garden houses which overlook the surrounding countryside. A sunken formal garden with low hedges and old-fashioned perennials is viewed from the terrace, with sheared boxwood “pillow” at the far end of the garden.
 

Michigan Vineyard
A new farmstead and vineyard, designed with simplicity and rusticity in mind. Clean lines of home and garden are enriched by the textures of wood, stone, and various hardy plants – combined to convey a blend of traditional and contemporary design. Low stone walls and plank fences, barn timber arbors, weathered furnishings and ornament, beds of shrub rose, lavender, and billowy grass – all relate to the open fields and orderly vineyards which surround them.