APLD Members ~ Member of the Month
view the featured member archive
Maria von Brincken, APLD
This award winning and published project [1] gave me an opportunity
to design and implement all the aspects of landscape design that I feel
are so important. Included in this start-to-finish design for a newly
constructed home in an existing neighborhood was the celebration of the
native landscape, enhancement of the home’s architecture, and creation
of beautiful and welcoming spaces of several kinds (entry gardens, play
spaces, entertainment, entry journey, etc.) This article will focus only
on the terrace/grove area in the front entry.
The major concern of the front entry was a slope so severe that the
hillside literally felt like it was sliding into the front rooms. The
tall trees atop the rocky glacial slope made the landscape feel overwhelming
and out of scale with the two-story façade. The formal colonial
style of the house suggested using formal terrace gardens. Pulling back
the slope with two curving formal fieldstone walls (glazed at night with
light) which forms the upper and lower terraces, I created an open and
graciously welcoming entry place. Granite steps connect one level to
another and are placed so that when looking out from the living room
and entry landing and up to the upper terrace garden, a sense of vast
openness is experienced.
The areas along and atop the back hillside wall were planted with narrow
and easily maintained perennials beds of spring bulbs. The perennial
beds appear to be layered on top of one another when viewed from the
living room and dining room, as the flowers of the lowest bed are seen
just below the flowers of the mid and top beds. The hillside plantings
above, provide an additional layer extending the planting combinations
of the lower perennial beds. The planting includes multiple season oakleaf
hydrangea, lilac (a New England favorite), bank hugging red stem dogwood,
and rhus (a favorite of the bluebirds). A grove of paperbark Maples (the
ones with the elegant peeling copper bark) planted on the upper and lower
terraces visually and spatially ties the extreme elevation of the lowest
terrace, upper terrace, and the roofline with existing mature oaks atop
the ridge. Additionally, the hillside planting of white fir and blue
spruce seen behind the maples provides contrasting texture and color
and further marries the ridge to the lowest entry-level garden.
The clients love the paperbark grove path that leads from the front
to side and back gardens and was envisioned as a formal “deep woods
experience”. The children enjoy hopping from stone to stone and
all enjoy the tactile celebration of the stones underfoot. The rich brown
multi-branched canopy and repeating rhythm of the upright trunk progression
creates an embracing spatial and linear sequence of human scale. The
experience of the soft thick carpet of small oval- leaved vinca creates
a pleasing textural contrast with the large irregular gray fieldstone.
And the peeling, curling, copper-brown bark contrasts vividly with the
rough stonewall and densely needled white fir and blue spruce. In darkness,
light brushes the stonewall creating a pattern of light and dark while
it casts highlighting patches of near and far, up and down on trunk,
branch and leaf pattern.
This landscape features a series of places that celebrate different
dimensions. Whether journeying by foot or car, one moves from one spatial
experience to the next, from upper elevations to lower, from woodland
to open terrace to grove, from shade to dappled light to full sun. Fragrances
include white pine, lilac, peonies, daphne, summersweet, and newly mown
grass. One sees a series of sequenced bloom and texture combinations
that repeat throughout the landscape connecting the parts with the whole
while celebrating the sound of numerous birds attracted to the plantings.
-------------------------------
[1] APLD 2003 Design Award; Article in “Front Yard Idea Book” by
Taunton Press 2002
Maria von Brincken, APLD, holds a graduate design certificate from the
Radcliffe Seminars Landscape Program, Radcliffe Institute (1994) and
a national certification from Association of Professional Landscape Designers
(2003). Trained as a fine artist, color theorist, and graphic designer,
she brings years of critical design thinking to her landscape solutions.
To learn more about Maria, please visit her website at www.mariavonbrincken.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