Also this fall...

So, a number of years ago, my husband and I were eating at a local restaurant with very tight seating, and we struck up a conversation with this really nice and fun couple at the next table.  Eventually they asked what I did, and they told me they had recently had a consultation and estimate (HUGE!) from another designer to remove the back deck and revamp the back yard.  The cost and scope kind of scared them off the whole project.  I said I had a feeling I could do better, and they ended up hiring Calafia, but we did the front, creating the landscape of the white "castle" you see on my website.  Never did get to the back, until this last fall.  

Here you see the path along the side of the house, leading into the back yard.  Below that, the monstrosity that was the old deck.  Honestly, it wasn't safe to walk on, and looked like a yacht had been beached in the yard.  And see that gorgeous, HUGE old elm?  Poor thing was surrounded by the enemy, and really struggling.

                       And one look at this old yew and I was salivating...  Where is my chain saw?

The clients love their front yard, with its controlled wildness, and wanted something similarly naturalistic, with a smaller deck of some kind.
One thing I don't like about a lot of decks is the way they can cut one off from the landscape.  It kind of makes you feel like you're in a playpen, and all the real action is "out there" somewhere.  And this one in particular made the yard feel really claustrophobic.  Plus it was red.  Why on earth...(the clients had inherited it when they bought the house).

NEXT POST will show the afters...