patios for the holidays!

Hope you had a great Thanksgiving holiday. Ours was appropriately gravy-covered and cheerful. So now let’s get back to patios, shall we?

We decided a few weeks back that our partner in crime will be Jim Egan of Land Design Associates in Walpole, MA. He’s psyched to launch into a project with a modern sensibility and has the design chops to withstand our quirkiness. When we shared our patio vision with him, he almost immediately turned around and handed us four patio layouts as a place to start. Impressive. He really took my Andrea Cochran obsession and ran with it! Take a peek…

* click to biggify *

THREE BANDS

This layout features three bands of stone pavers divided by strips of grass. Rectangles of black Mexican beach pebbles and plantings bound the lawn side of the patio. The fish pond is about where we pictured it but a little smaller, with steps across it to the patio…

option #1: 3 strips

PAC MAN

In this layout, the patio breaks from a singular rectangle to include some functional areas — ex., our Phoenix Grill/firepit is the triangle on the left edge of the patio. Again, the pool is about where we pictured it. Strategic lines of plantings move you through the garden (a la Pac Man)…

choice #2: pac man

THE ISLAND OF PATIO

Wow. There’s almost too much to look at in this layout to take it all in. How about I simplify things?

choice #3: L pool

If we zoom in on the patio you can see that the pond wraps around two edges, with steps across the pond to the patio in two places. Essentially, the patio is an island. I so want to get stranded there…

patio island closeup

CIRCLE UP!

Ooh, this layout has it all. Excitement. Drama. Curves to offset our linear house. Nice. So the rectangular patio is intercepted by a circle, the diameter of which is made up of plantings, pond and (at the far corner of the yard) a curved stone bench…

option #4: circle

The center of the circle is lawn with a rill of water through it. Love that…

circle closeup

Man, a lot to choose from, right? David and I narrowed it to our favorites — the last two. We met with Jim and came up with a few tweaks. We hemmed. We hawed. Then we had to pull the trigger on one final choice last Wednesday. Can you guess which?

I’ll tell you in my next post. Jim and crew are outside setting the markers for the upper patio right now!

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UPDATE: At least one of you knows how militantly anti-hedge I am. Don’t worry, I’ll not be budged into hedging. Screening, yes. Hedging, never. I thank Jim for his ideas, though. He knew not of my bias. :)

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2 Responses to “patios for the holidays!”

  1. […] MOD REMOD « patios for the holidays! […]

  2. […] we chosen the Circle Up landscape layout from among our many choices, the pond and patios would probably be done now. Probably. Maybe. Smaller pond means less digging. […]

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