Year: 2024

Location: Park Slope, Brooklyn

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

Striking, warm-toned elements such as oiled ipe decking and stairs, oxidized corten steel planters, and walls painted a rich terra cotta offer bright contrast to thermal-cut bluestone pavers – and speak beautifully to a planting that features pink in nearly every selection, whether in stems, foliage, or blooms.

Betula nigra ‘Duraheat’ (river birch) and lagerstroemia indica ‘Natchez’ (white-flowering crape myrtle) anchor the space while flowering shrubs such as hydrangea paniculata ‘Little Quick Fire,’ nandina domestica ‘Gulfstream’, cornus alba ‘Ivory Halo,’ and cotinus coggygria ‘Winecraft black’ offer a rosy-tinged and textured understory. Grasses and flowering perennials, also touched with dusty pinks, bright oranges, and rusty reds, add bright pops of color as well as fullness and dimension.

Complementary corten elements include a sleek and contemporary cylindrical fountain (think: the peaceful, meditative sound of moving water) and Louis Poulson bollard lights that illuminate a pathway through the space and add atmosphere long into the evening.