Contemporary Custom Home Landscape

2016 Silver Award for Excellence in Residential Landscape Design and Construction

Wisconsin Landscape Contractors Association

This project reimagines the plantings around an architect‑designed home whose initial landscape fell short of the client’s vision. By introducing a bold new planting palette, reshaping the beds to echo the home’s unique geometry, and enhancing privacy around the main patio, the redesign brings the property into harmony with both the architecture and the client’s love of prairie‑inspired gardens.

This award‑winning project began when our client realized that the landscape installed shortly after their architect‑designed home was completed didn’t reflect their preferences or the character of the site. The plantings lacked the prairie‑style perennials they had loved at their previous home, and the abundance of variegated and gold foliage plants felt out of place. Although the landscape was only a year old, they knew it needed a thoughtful redesign and reached out to us for help.

We reworked the planting beds around the entire home, with particular focus on the front and the existing main patio. One of the most distinctive architectural features was the angled placement of the dining area and pergola on the patio. We used this angle as a guiding design element, repeating it in key bed lines—especially in the newly redesigned planting bed that encloses the patio. The remaining bed shapes were defined by bold, simple curves and arc‑tangent corners, creating a cohesive and contemporary flow around the home.

The heart of the redesign centered on the plant palette. We introduced a mix of shrubs, ornamental grasses, and perennials that offered the bold colors and prairie‑inspired character the client preferred. The expanded patio bed also provides additional privacy from neighboring properties, making the outdoor living space feel more intimate and inviting.

A memorable moment in the project came when the client asked for our input on a custom sculpture commissioned from a well‑known artist. We were honored to help select the sculpture’s placement and even contributed to choosing its final color—an exciting opportunity to influence a meaningful artistic element of the property.

The result is a landscape that finally matches the home’s architecture and the client’s aesthetic, blending bold plantings, thoughtful geometry, and personal touches into a unified and expressive design.