Landscape Innovator Winners
Our IDA winners have been announced! Discover who our judges picked for best in Landscape!
Green-on-Green Contrasting textures create long-term interest. (this page) A giant weeping beech, original to the property, towers in the background. photograph by john hall
clockwise from left: Green-on-Green Boston Ivy, wisteria and deep purple clematis varieties, including Clematis “Jackmanii” shroud the stone wall. Decorative gates keep the pool to code. Across the grassy path, trees are underplanted with Liriope spicata. photographs by john hall
Lush Landscape (clockwise across spread from top left) Betula jacquemontii, or Himalayan birch, was selected for its very white bark. The Campania (reproduction) pot in the box parterre contains a Meyer Lemon plant. Custom iron fencing and focal points mark entry points and tie the landscape and pool area back to the house. The shape of the pool was unchanged, but working with Andre Tchelistcheff Architects, a stair, new coping and lighting were added. A white Kousa dogwood blooms near the birch garden. Long beds of herbs, grasses and perennials form subtle, near-monochromatic sweeps enlivened in early spring by clumps of white allium, then lavender and pink Japanese anemone.
Winner
Gardenesque style successfully connects pool, pool house and pergola to established terraces and porches
The look is timeless, yet these quiet, meditative walkways and garden rooms are the recent handiwork of Alice Cooke Design Associates, LLC. For Alice Cooke, private gardens are a living, abundant expression of their owners’ personal style—both a refuge and a sanctuary. Here, the homeowner was from California and wanted something herbal-based. “‘The client only wanted a couple of colors: pale pink, blue and white. And said: Please, no roses anywhere,’” notes Cooke.
The mission was to redesign and connect a pool, new pool house and pergola to an existing 19th-century, English Country-style Greenwich home. Strong lines and sweeps of perennials suggest that there is a desire here for ease, understatement, unity and sustainability. “I love having bold lines in the garden,” says Cooke. “This landscape is not about high maintenance and the business of flower gardens, but good bones and loose drifts of perennials.” It’s a style called gardenesque, in the manner of the High Line—that is, garden design looking out to the bigger, wild and natural landscape.
An impressive stone wall and a number of mature trees were already in place when Alice Cooke began. She sharpened the focus and kept the pool secure by adding gates, custom iron fencing and focal points to mark entries and to tie the landscape and pool area back to the house. “I never did drawings,” says Cooke. “It was great to have the work be a direct conversation between the client’s dream and the designer’s aesthetic.”
Want to see more winners from the Innovation in Design Awards? Click on a category below to view each winner:
bath
architecture
kitchen
interior design
Amazing Design Gates in the thuja maze allow for an everchanging configuration. Broad terraces are set in a middle valley that connects the house to the lawn. Stone steps lead to the maze entrance. Pool installation by Shoreline Pools. Terrace, pool, planters and plantings designed by Diane Devore. photographs by david heald
Innovator 2
A life-size maze brings a touch of whimsy to this terraced garden
The landscape for this classic Westport home needed to pay homage to the surrounding neighborhood—old estates from the 1920s—while meeting the needs of new owners with three young children. It was left to Diane Devore, a registered Landscape Architect and principal of Devore Associates Landscape Architects, to deftly insert a series of working terraces leading from the house out into the surrounding landscape, much of which is classified as wetlands. The terraces are nestled along a valley at the center of the property. They do duty as grilling and seating areas, new pool and maze.
Chief among these new spaces is the native thuja (arborvitae) maze, which can be seen from above when entering the drive. The idea for the maze was inspired by one at Colonial Williamsburg, and its presence pays homage to the owner’s passion for early American antiques. The labyrinth was designed to engage the children and has the sneaky ability to reconfigure its route by pivoting nine different gates. A highlight every fall is when the white Peegee hydrangeas bloom, creating the perfect background to the maze.
“There were beautiful existing hydrangeas,” says Devore, “and fragrant Daphne transatlantica Jim’s Pride by the front door.” New plantings include roses, flowering perennials and shrubs, among these a variety of camellias. “We were able to use winter-hardy camellias in protected areas, and they have done very well,” says Devore.
Want to see more winners from the Innovation in Design Awards? Click on a category below to view each winner:
bath
architecture
kitchen
interior design
left: Opposites Attract In an amusing play of contrasts, the hard edge of a granite path appears to dissolve into irregular tufts of silky moss. clockwise from middle left: Deeper Meanings Plantings were chosen for texture and kept within a quiet palette of greens and grays: Anemone Berkshire Charm blooms in the foreground. Ben Young achieves a feeling of timelessness with a planting of ancient Hinoki cypress trees, which form a soft scrim behind the yew hedge. Trimmed boxwood is massed along the hillside. A grass path leads to the front door past trimmed Japanese Holly crescents: Called “The Embrace,” the forms suggest the idea of embracing life. Stately cryptomeria along the pool by Wagner Pools in Darien impart “the weight of time,” according to Young. photographs by ben young
Innovator 3
An imaginative design blurs the lines between landscape and architecture
Ben Young’s take on gardens is anything but typical, and such is the case on this Greenwich hillside. The owners desired a retreat from the city, but with none of the blandness or normalcy that sometimes characterizes suburban plots. That being said, the clients’ deeper wish was for a “garden of memory that reinforces the beauty of life as a gift.” Landscape designer Ben Young managed to achieve both of these desires with a lyrical study in granite and evergreens.
The entire property is less than an acre, so every square foot counts. According to Young, it is not so much a landscape planned on paper as a garden that unfolds as you experience the hilly terrain. “A garden lives and breathes,” says Young, “and it all takes time.” Developed over three years, the nursery stock was brought in and staged, in phases, on-site. Today, massed undulating topiaried shrubs are trimmed, block-like elements that emerge in the landscape almost like bones beneath the skin.
Although native to Massachusetts, Young has lived in Idaho for more than a dozen years. Clients brought him to New York, where he connected with the architect of this project. The landscape was planned in concert with the house. “A good part of the success was the client,” says Young. “I was always pushed to do something different.” This quiet landscape is tribute to that sensitive collaboration.
Want to see more winners from the Innovation in Design Awards? Click on a category below to view each winner:
bath
architecture
kitchen
interior design
