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Barbara Hilty, APLD
Barbara Hilty Landscape Design. LLC, Portland, Oregon
APLD Featured Landscape Designer, March 2008
As a landscape designer I constantly encourage homeowners to use their front gardens as living space. This featured garden is an example of transforming an unused front yard into a useable and delightful garden.
As I walked up to the front door for the first time on this job I was thinking, “Another unused front yard in a typical suburban neighborhood. I wonder if they will be open using the front yard.”
But when the homeowner opened the front door, the walls exploded with color and the interior was filled with fun and whimsical art. My client, an artist herself, wanted to open up the dining room to the front yard as this was the south side of the house, and in the Pacific Northwest, the coveted sun can be scarce most of the time. I didn’t have to talk my client into the idea of using the front yard, she was already on board!
However, there were problems. The dining room looked out on an ugly “snout” garage. The driveway needed replacing, three mature existing Japanese maples limited where the entry path could be, and the owner wanted to keep the existing split rail fence and the ‘poodled’ conifers.
My challenge as a designer was to meet my client’s needs, yet I wanted to give a “hint” to someone approaching the front door of the fun inside the house while still allowing the house to peacefully coexist in the conservatively landscaped neighborhood.
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I took my cues from the architecture of the home. The house had an existing brick façade, so I designed a walled courtyard using the same brick to enclose the entry and dining room doors. The new entry path has a diagonal grid which links to the larger diagonal grid of the new driveway. For one “hint”, I designed a false “window” on the garage with matching house shutters. This window is in reality a water feature with water sliding down the ‘window panes’ made of tile. The window of water reflects the garden back to viewers in the dining room. Playing with the architecture, the new entry gate became an inverse of the house shutters. For another “hint”, a Miro inspired multicolored hedge snakes through the lawn (a maintenance headache, but the client loves it). The hedge has yet to fill in properly, but time will take care of that.
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My client says the front courtyard is in constant use, with people spilling out of the house into the sun. Goal accomplished---another front yard reclaimed as usable space, a garden created without major disruption to the existing landscape, and people delightfully surprised when discovering the window is in fact a waterfall.
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About the designer:
Barbara operates her own business, Barbara Hilty Landscape Design, LLC in Portland Oregon. She has been practicing landscape design since 1982 and was certified by APLD in 2002. Barbara specializes in matching landscapes to period architecture.
Her gardens have appeared in Portland’s leading newspaper, “The Oregonian” several times over the years. In 2005 twelve APLD Oregon Chapter members participated the Portland Home and Garden Show, each designing a different “Zodiac” garden. Barbara’s “Virgo Garden” received a Silver Medal.
The range of her landscape design volunteer work has spanned designing postage stamp sized Habitat for Humanity Gardens to a freeway beautification of an interchange where she organized over 200 volunteers to plant 7 acres.
Barbara currently serves on the APLD Oregon Chapter’s Board as Past President, co teaches APLD certification workshops, and is co chairing the APLD 2009 Conference Local Site Committee. Barbara looks forward to hosting the APLD Conference and welcoming all of APLD’s members to Portland, Oregon in 2009!
To find out more about Barbara’s work please visit her website: www.hiltylandscapedesign.com
Certified Members seeking to be profiled should send before and after photos with SHORT design intent statement to:
Bethany Dennis
APLD Communications Manager
Email: communications@apld.org
Phone: 717-238-9780
* PHOTOS SHOULD BE CLEAR COLOR PRINTS OR JPEG COMPRESSED FILES