Designing a landscape is akin to constructing a narrative, says Rob Calderaro, a senior associate with Gregory Lombardi Design, a landscape architecture firm with offices in Massachusetts and Florida. "What’s the story we’re trying to tell, and how do we want to tell it?" says Calderaro. "Is it about a farmhouse in an agrarian setting or a rustic cottage on a weir pond? We can utilize fountains or accent pavers or sometimes sculptures to tell that story. For instance, for a farmhouse, we stacked millstone to create a rustic fountain."
Hardscape—inanimate landscape elements such as walkways, patios, stone walls, and, by some definitions, fountains and statues—should tie into the design of the home in other ways as well. The placement of these elements should help to strengthen the interior-exterior relationship, says Calderaro. "You want to create what we call ‘great moments,’ " he explains. You do so, for instance, by placing a fountain in a spot that a bay window overlooks. At a home in Massachusetts, Lombardi Design used a Porter Garden Telescope from Telescopes of Vermont to create one of these moments.
The telescope—a limited-edition, $60,000, hand-finished, cast bronze re-creation of the one that Hale Telescope designer Russell Porter created in the 1920s—stands nearly 3 feet tall and sits on a 3-foot-tall marble pedestal. The telescope is equipped with modern optics, but it’s also a sculptural form that can serve as a sundial. Lombardi Design placed the telescope in the backyard and facing north, so that the shadow it casts on the circle of pavers surrounding it tells the hour. More important, the telescope is positioned so that when you open the front door to the home you immediately see it, through a bay window in the back of the house. "You’re also trying to draw people from the interior to the exterior," Calderaro explains.
Placement of hardscape adornments also can involve what Calderaro refers to as axial alignments. As an example, he cites a home with unusual angles and a wing that juts out into the backyard. Lombardi Design drew a virtual line from the center of the wing into the yard, and along that line it installed a pool that looks like a weir pond and, 200 feet beyond that, a fire pit. "Working with axial alignments helps to order the landscape," says Calderaro. "You create order, you tell a story, and at the end of the day you have a gorgeous landscape."
On the following page, we spotlight other hardscape items—some perhaps liberally defined as such—that can enhance your property.
Techo-Bloc Carved Imagery Pavers
The Carved Imagery collection of paving stones from Techo-Bloc, a company headquartered in Quebec and Pennsylvania that makes landscape and masonry paving, allows you to personalize your driveway or walkway. On it, you can display your favorite sports team or your family’s coat of arms or any custom design. Techo-Bloc has a network of dealers and contractors throughout Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, and the New England and Mid-Atlantic states.
Connor Sport Court PowerGame Outdoor Court
For the athletically inclined, the best way to enhance the landscape might be to add a playing surface to it. PowerGame, the latest modular surface from a company that has been making outdoor courts since 1974, offers high traction and low abrasion, so that if you do slip, you won’t suffer cuts or burns. “If you have kids, you like knowing where they are,” says Connor Sport Court’s Jim Ure. “If you have a Sport Court in your backyard, your kids will be there—and so will the neighbors’ kids.” Connor Sport Court has dealers throughout the United States.
Carved Stone Creations Fountains and Statuary
Carved Stone Creations deals in durable goods—very durable goods. “When we build an estate, we want it to be around for 400 or 500 years,” says owner and president Rob Ripley, who founded the company six years ago in Kaukauna, Wis., near Green Bay. “We want people to be able to see what their great-great-great-great-great-grandpa built.” In addition to building entire homes—Ripley likens one recent project to a medieval castle—Carved Stone Creations offers stock and custom-made fountains and statuary, all carved from solid granite or limestone sourced from Egypt, Turkey, or China. “Cast concrete eventually fails,” says Ripley. “How good does a concrete driveway look after 10 years? If you want a fountain to be beautiful and to be around for a long, long time, do it in granite.”
The full scope of what Carved Stone Creations offers is on display at its showroom in Kaukauna, where you’ll find, in addition to stone items for your home and landscape, a full replica of the Alamo, a medieval castle, the staircase at the Palace of Justice in Monaco, and the entry to a Tuscan-style villa, including a balcony. “The idea,” says Ripley, whose company designs and installs projects all across the country, “is to get people to fly in here to see what we’re capable of.”
Iron Age Designs Decorative Drainage Grates
Drainage grates may seem like a mundane (though essential) element to a landscape design, but as Iron Age Designs demonstrates, they don’t have to be dull. The Burien, Wash., company, which was founded in 2005 and has a network of dealers throughout the country, has transformed drainage grates into an art form. The company offers a selection of standard designs, and it will create custom designs for homes, businesses, and public institutions and parks, such as the promenade surrounding the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. The grates are made in the United States from cast iron (recycled from auto parts), aluminum, or bronze. “You spend a lot on a patio or a pool deck, and you have to drain it so that it doesn’t flood,” says company president and CEO Mark Armstrong. “You can use grates that augment its appearance instead of detracting from it.”