Year: 2024

Location: Cobble Hill, Brooklyn

Scope: landscape & drainage design, project management, masonry, carpentry, planters, plants, lighting & irrigation

A bluestone patio and a synthetic lawn with unique curves and cutouts form the foundation of a generous and versatile space for relaxing, dining, and playing. 

A unique specimen tree, chionanthus retusus, (also known as fringe tree) comes through the turf, forming a white and frothy focal point in bloom while a many-textured, wraparound planting of shrubs and perennials – here a little shade-loving, there a little sun-loving – bursts with yellow blooms across three seasons; in earliest spring, hamemalis x intermedia ‘Arnold Promise’ unfurls its tiny golden hands followed in early summer by tufts of buttery-pale threadleaf coreopsis, which are then joined in high summer and into the fall by a sea of rudbeckia (black eyed susan!) and wheaty-blonde flowering grasses including calamagrostis ‘Karl Foerster’ and bouteloua ‘blonde ambition.’

As functional as it is lovely, the garden began as a major drainage project with a dry well system designed to handle the surface water accumulation of a three-inch storm, i.e. an extreme weather event like we experienced in late September of 2023, during which parts of Brooklyn received three inches of rainfall in a single hour.