Year: 2024

Location: Cobble Hill, Brooklyn

Scope: landscape & drainage design, project management, masonry, plants

Sometimes we hide the elements of a drainage strategy – and sometimes a drainage strategy becomes a focal point.

On Baltic, a fence-mounted copper trough delivers stormwater water collected on the parlor terrace to the back of the multi-level garden and into a designed dry stream. The meandering bed of the stream, composed of local boulders and river stones, acts as a French drain and ends in a subsurface catchment basin that can handle more than 80 gallons of runoff during an extreme rain event.

Along the banks of the stream and throughout the garden, layered and limey plantings create a lush sense of privacy – and a bit of woodland mystery. Unique and leafy shade-lovers, including kirengeshoma palmata, farfugium japonica, aralia cordata ‘sun king,’ and rodgersia pinnata ‘Superba’ offer focal points among clusters of ferns and swaths of wild ginger. A wave of neon hakonechloa macra ‘all gold’ breaks over the front of a (refreshed!) stacked stone wall.