Mid-Century Modern Landscape - Cedarburg, WI

2017 Bronze Award for Excellence in Residential Landscape Design and Construction - Wisconsin Landscape Contractors Association

Our client's mid-century modern home sat on an amazing site high on a bluff overlooking Cedar Creek. Our client wanted to take control of her mature and overgrown landscape and have it designed with an Asian flavor. To connect home and landscape, we designed a new stone column and address fence, carefully matching the stone colors and how the mortar was applied. We helped our client choose the light for the column and suggested that the coach lights on the house be changed to match.

A new entry walk was designed, with separate panels of irregular bluestone. Set at a 45 degree angle to the front door, the walk draws more attention to the covered entryway. A pondless water feature of carved granite adds an Asian element to the garden and creates a focal point near the front door.

Our client loves plants and even gave us the option of removing as much of the front lawn as we wished. We focused on plants that would feel appropriate in an Asian garden setting, while still providing continuous bloom and color through the seasons. The palette of color was limited to shades of pink and blue with a splash of yellow and white for contrast.

Also into vegetable gardening, our client never had a defined space for her efforts. As the only sunny spot on the property was in the front yard, we made the vegetable garden an integral part of the design. A stone slab "bridge" leads to the garden, crossing over a slate chip dry creek bed with Aqua Blue granite boulders.

We designed a new fence around an existing deck that matched the address marker out front and created a gate/ arbor with an Asian flavor. From the deck, a new stairway of lannon outcropping leads down the bluff to a newly cleared space along the edge of the creek. The new clearing offers a destination for our client and her family to the creek below. A crushed granite patio surrounds the new fire pit, which in turn is set in a circle of manicured lawn. Outside the lawn, native wildflowers replace the overgrown area of invasives and weeds that was originally present. New LED, low-voltage lighting adds the final touch along the stone steps.

Our client and her family now have a landscape that encourages them to be outside year-round.