Year: 2022

Location: Stuyvesant Heights, Brooklyn

Scope: design assist, project management, masonry, woodwork, lighting, irrigation, planting

A 24-foot steel koi pool makes a striking central focal point, stretching nearly the full length of the garden and giving the space a serene, contemporary formality. 

A bluestone landing patio welcomes you out of the house, inviting you to step up onto a cedar deck that runs along the pool. The deck passes under a canopy of established trees retained from the original garden and delivers you to the back room – a second, larger patio area for gathering and grilling.

A colorful, layered planting surrounds the pool, deck, and patios: stands of native Carpinus caroliniana (American Hornbeam) create bright hedges. Between them, white Camellia japonica, Pieris japonica (Japanese Andromeda) and Hydrangea quercifolia (Oak Leaf Hydrangea) join a host of unique and surprising flowering perennials including Rodgersia pinnata, Sanguisorba officinalis (Great Burnet), Thalictrum rochebrunianum (Meadow Rue), Persicaria (Knotweed), Actea (Black Cohosh), and Astrantia (Masterwort). Low-growing Tiarella cordifolia (Foamflower), Geranium, and Waldstenia fragarioides (Barren Strawberry), together with Matteucia struthiopteris (ostrich fern) and Polystichum polyblepharum (Tassel Fern) form a thick green underlayer. Here and there Schizophragma hydrangenoides (Climbing Hydrangea) and Parthenocissus quinquefolia (Virginia Creeper) vines form an organic backdrop, reaching up the fence. 

Fresh cladding on the house’s extension, corten bed edging, and sleek new lighting complement the dark steel of the pool and the warm wood of the deck, completing the space.