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The contrasting elements in this design create a cool and calming retreat.
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The planting bed walls, crafted with used brick coated with white stucco, were designed to function as additional seating.
A wall-to-wall “carpet” of Buckingham slate chips runs the length of a narrow alleyway that serves two Fan row houses. The stone crunches underfoot, announcing your arrival in the small courtyard garden at the end of the alley. “It’s a threshold moment,” says Joshua Delaney of Thresholds Design, who conceived the space.
The homeowner wanted an urban oasis, one that would mask the activity of a nearby pocket park as well as the view of the power lines that run behind the house. “The interior of the home has a modern aesthetic with a found-object sensibility,” Delaney says. He extended the vibe into the new space, using plants to juxtapose the 100-year-old home with a garden, the modernist bones of which were a bit raw.
In the alley leading to the garden, visitors are announced by the crunch of the Buckingham slate chips underfoot.
Because it faces south-southeast, the garden is bathed in bright, direct light for most of the day. Delaney countered the sun’s intensity with cool colors and heat-reflective materials. The patio is paved in Oyster Blue limestone, its pale blue-white surface and natural clefts a perfect foil for the bright light. Two L-shaped raised beds face each other from opposite sides of the 640-square-foot space. Built out of brick repurposed from an old patio, the bed walls are coated in cement and white sand parge (or stucco) and crowned with an 8-foot-long slab of honed granite that serves as low seating.
In dramatic contrast to the white of the masonry, Delaney finished the garden’s wooden privacy fence with Cabot solid stain in Dark Slate. The deep blue recedes, bringing the plants to the forefront. “From the white cement parge to the granite bench, light blue limestone and deep blue wall, the materials were all chosen to create an atmosphere of cool calm,” he explains.
The yard’s straight lines and sharp angles are tempered by the soft chaos of the plants. “I like the tension between the wild and the made,” Delaney says. In the raised beds, a procession of six columnar hornbeams alternates with five tree-form limelight hydrangeas set in Corten steel planters that are just beginning to rust. Autumn fern and Lenten rose fill the spaces at their feet.
Native grasses and prairie flowers thrive in the full sun on the opposite side of the garden, offering seasonal interest as well as food and shelter for wildlife. Fire Chief globe arborvitae evergreens, which will transition from rust red and metallic blue in the fall to tones of green come spring, are underplanted with black mondo grass, while a slender native Taylor juniper and Boston ivy frame the home’s kitchen window.
With its solid forms and natural features, the garden has an authentic feel — as though it has always been there and always will be. Delaney likes to imagine it someday aging into a beautiful ruin.
