Photo courtesy of Reed Hilderbrand With children in mind, the pool is clever-ly bisected by a wooden boardwalk, leaving one side a kid-friendly shallow pool and the other an 8-foot-deep pool for adults. A path carved into the hillside wends its way throughout the property, winding up here at the outdoor kitchen and dining terrace. The roof and inset vertical fireplace are made of COR-TEN, a durable steel alloy with a warm, rusty patina.

REED HILDERBRAND

1,500 gallons of compost tea, one hundred cubic yards of green waste. Fifty-six acres of sustainable earth-friendly gardens, meadows, prairies and knolls. And all this just an hour outside Manhattan.  

Fed by their desire for a low-impact landscape that provides a daily bounty of fresh flowers, fruits and vegetables as well as seductive wide-open spaces for roaming and wandering, the owners of this Westchester County, New York, property took on the daunting challenge of gardening organically on a grand scale. "The homeowners have an avid interest in horticulture and are on the board of the New York Botanical Garden," says Doug Reed of Reed Hilderbrand of Watertown, Massachusetts, the firm that created the original and current landscapes on the property. "They are also serious foodies with a love of outdoor entertaining."

Easy on the eyes and easy on the earth, the resulting gardens are spectacular. Just steps from the house, a 60-foot-by-80-foot vegetable garden is studded with rows of tall, clean-lined towers for beans and tomatoes. Nearby, long, deep perennial borders provide cut flowers, a shrub garden offers up three seasons of interest, and a sleek channel of water in the perennial garden adds soft sounds. Here, modern luxury pairs successfully with country-house simplicity. Just a short walk and you're in the woods. Beyond that, the sweeping vistas of meadows and terraced fields beckon.   

The magic here, however, is a bit less Mother Nature and a lot more handyman. In order to efficiently and effectively garden such a large property using organic methods, a matrix of loop-closing on-site systems was created. Now, all green waste is composted and that compost turned into a liquid fertilizer (compost tea) that is automatically fed back to the plants. To better use water resources, the sprinkler systems were retrofitted to work with greater efficiency.

Nonnative intruders are routinely removed and desired species encouraged, particularly in the open grasslands where a regular early-spring mowing routine dampens the enthusiasm of more-aggressive plants.
At every step, the designer and the homeowners have stealthily incorporated technologies and techniques to reduce the impact on the environment. And, with none of the tiresome crunchy-granola hyperearnestness that can accompany a good-works garden. Love it? Says Reed: "Nothing done here can't be replicated on the smaller scale of an average American backyard." We couldn't agree more.

Photo by ANDREA JONES Inexpensive chic sheets of industrial B-decking clad the roof of this sculptural pergola with its dramatic 6-foot cantilever. The wide-rib panels are angled to provide shade from the hot afternoon sun.

STEVE MARTINO,CACTUS CITY DESIGN


Landscape architect Steve Martino, Principal of Cactus City Design in Phoenix, Arizona, knows how to put the "play" in "fair play." In this Paradise Valley garden — water-wise, filled to overflowing with indigenous plants, and a happy habitat for everything that crawls, flies or slithers in the desert — sustainability was never so much fun.

Amidst the eco-tech rainwater-harvesting systems, drip- irrigation and porous paving like decomposed granite, there are towering concrete panels painted in ode-to-desert-flower shades of pale lavender, yellow, burnt red and muted green. Adapted plants and natives flank a pergola roofed with industrial metal sheeting and a wall of woven aluminum flashing straight from the big box store. And a fire pit that shoots flames 4 feet into the air is ringed in rebar. This garden might "step lightly" and all that, but it also packs one big punch.

"My clients wanted a desert house, so I gave them a garden that celebrates rather than denies the desert," says Martino. "In an area where perfectly fine existing homes are torn down and replaced with large new homes, these owners chose to 'recycle' and remodel their existing house."

Beginning about 10 years ago, his first tasks were to rip out the improbable yet ubiquitous water-sucking lawn and remove a stand of invasive tamarisk trees that blocked the unrivaled views of famed Camelback Mountain in the distance — both installed despite the fact that the fragile Sonoran Desert actually supports a rich variety of unique plant life.

As the house was expanded during a span of four phases, the landscape was adapted to aid in the cooling of the interiors with strategically placed specimens adding much-needed shade. To further tie the 1960s contemporary house to the landscape, a row of desert trees was salvaged and located between the house and the street, transforming the building from being simply an object to a place.

Even though he chose rare plants like Bursera shrubs and a boojum tree for a special Baja-inspired garden requested by the owner, Martino uses the tried and true whenever possible. "I like to take common plants and glorify them," he says of the mesquites, palo verde trees, agaves and prickly-pear cactuses that fill the garden.  

Using inexpensive, readily available industrial materials like aluminum flashing, rebar and corrugated B-decking (galvanized steel panels used for industrial roofing), a pergola and fences go from useful to intriguing features. And tilting walls, setting elements at angles, aligning features and borrowing scenery from the local topography add compelling interest without requiring the use of precious resources.

The results of all this attention to detail is a landscape that has integrity and where no opportunity was missed to minimize the ecological footprint, but also a delightful place to play. "This project illustrates that design can be artful as well as healing and nurturing to the environment."