Arches cut out of massive Cuban laurel hedges are a decorative and functional leitmotif throughout the property.
Terry Rakolta has no trouble reeling off words to describe what she desired for her South Florida waterfront property, a wedge-shaped half-acre mostly swallowed up by a Mediterranean-style villa. “I wanted charming, romantic, mysterious, Old World,” she says. “I just didn't know how to get there from a big house sitting on a lot.”
Achieving this sublime vision fell to the Palm Beach-based landscape architecture firm of Sanchez & Maddux, known for their synthesis of classical European garden design elements with exotic tropical plants. The term they use to describe their signature style—“the civilized jungle”—is also the title of a book about their work published last year by Grayson Publishing.
