APLD ~ APLD Members ~ Member of the Month

APLD Members ~ Member of the Month

Melissa Clark, APLD
Featured Member, APLD Website, February 2007

A Woodland Garden Evolves

Six years ago, shortly after completing my landscape design studies at George Washington University in the District of Columbia, I was fortunate enough to meet my first set of clients who wanted a substantial face-lift for their entire property. The suburban Maryland neighborhood they live in is full of mature stands of azaleas, oak and beech trees. These clients had recently completed a renovation of the house’s interior spaces and now wanted to turn their attention to upgrading the landscape environment around their corner-lot home, which had been long neglected by the previous owners. Ivy covered a dry-stacked retaining wall in the front yard; many plantings were struggling, and a long stretch of narrow brick pathway along the rear of the driveway and house resembled a bowling alley.

Their requests were relatively straightforward. First, they wanted a play area for their small daughter (whom they described as a cross between “an engineer and a ballerina”). They also wanted a small seating area in the back of the house where they could enjoy coffee and read the paper in good weather. Both clients understood and embraced the need for a design that would fit in with the woodland nature of the existing setting and complement the house, although they wanted low-maintenance plantings. To this wish list I added the need to deal with the bowling alley path and to integrate the edge of their property with that of the neighbors to their left.

All of these goals were accomplished by the initial design. First, I designed a circular “magic garden” for the daughter (a raised stacked-stone area of grass with plantings of ‘fairy bell’ flowers - columbines, bleeding heart, variegated Solomon’s seal - and a small area of river jacks to arrange and re-arrange as she pleased, topped off with two small rock basins for collecting and emptying water). The area is visible from the kitchen window, and has been used for ballet performances, tea parties, and countless other imaginative gatherings and endeavors.

The small seating area behind the house was installed about two years after the initial plantings went in, and between it and the street, a teak arbor with two flanking panels sits over an inset of rectangular flagstone pavers. The arbor and pavers help demarcate an “inner” and “outer” garden and visually break up the long walk of brick pavers that previously dominated the view behind the house. And on the left side of the front yard, we planted white azaleas in a bed to echo a similar bed in the property next to theirs, creating an almost seamless transition between the two areas.

The owners are delighted with the transformation, which also included cleaning up the stone wall area and delineating beds with sweeping curves that echo the wall itself. The most rewarding aspect of this garden, however, has come from watching it grow over time. The design/build company I work with, Landscape Projects, Inc., maintains the garden and I continue to work with the clients to improve it.

Just this past year, we installed three wooden Nepalese window screens as a sculptural element in the garden, around a new copper beech tree that was planted to replace a hickory tree destroyed by a lightning strike. Installing the screens was the homeowners’ idea (the panels had previously hung in a recently-redecorated family room). Obtaining permission from the neighborhood association for the project, integrating them into the landscape, and devising a way to install them (redesigning the bed area around them in the process), however, impressed on me how much the clients had come to love the garden and view it as a “work in progress.” It also allowed me to stretch myself in new ways. When a designer can be a good steward of a garden as it grows over time, everyone benefits, not least of all the garden!

About the Designer

Melissa Clark, APLD, is a recovered lawyer who now practices landscape design with Landscape Projects, Inc. (www.landscapeprojects.com) in Bethesda, MD. Her projects have involved properties in northern Virginia, suburban Maryland, and the District of Columbia. The garden described above won First Place in APLD’s 2004 Residential Design Competition for residential gardens in the “under $25,000” category. She is a member and former secretary of the DC.MD.VA Chapter of APLD and maintains its website. You can read about other projects and her design philosophy at her personal website, www.madgardener.net.

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