Urban Woodland Haven

Tucked away from the bustle of city life, is a garden dedicated to creating a “woodland” haven, with a planting theme inspired from the client’s childhood memories growing up in Croatia. While the climate is very different, the sense of well-being from being connected to nature, of living out in the garden, of growing a bit of food, transcends space and time, and that is what we sought to bring into this space.

Landscape Features:

This urban garden has six distinct “rooms”, the “long” dining patio, the front entry garden, the Potager, the woodland fire pit patio, the back hot tub patio and the lowered screened porch.

Up front, a pea stone drive lined with recycled granite curbing and tucked in by deep border garden beds, has been reclaimed as the family outdoor dining patio (still allowing for off street parking in case of a winter snow ban). The other front garden is a small brick patio, reshaped from what was originally there to allow for more planting space, truly making this an entry garden with a reason to stay for a bit. Both Front gardens are a blend of woodland and cottage gardens, full of texture and blooms throughout the season, with Taller trees and shrubs that will mature over time to create more and more privacy with age.

A step down transitions you to the back, where a bluestone walk runs along the Potager, flowing into the back bluestone patio. The Potager consists of four raised beds with bluestone steppers set as a pathway in the pea stone, leading from the bluestone walk to the back fire pit patio. True to its name, a cottage garden bed “L’s” around, with fruiting trees and shrubs tucked in the border with structural shrubs, and flowering perennials.

The fire pit patio is surrounded by woodland plantings and natural boulders that break the lines of the patio, as plants mature and fill out this area will be densely packed with plantings spilling over and softening edge and with larger trees tucking filling in canopy, creating a small woodland glade.

Fieldstone steppers bring you through lower plantings and over to the bluestone patio area. Part of this space was the design and build of a screened porch, blending the inside and out. Steps from the house lead down into the porch so it sits lower in the landscape, then more steps lead down to large granite slabs that bring you out onto the bluestone patio. A Maine Cedar tub with a natural cedar interior is the highlight of this space, but with room around it for good access in and out of the back shed and for seating to be set up around the out tub for lounging in the afternoon. The plantings in this space are young but will fill in to create privacy.