Matthew Cunningham won an ASLA Residential Honor Award for this project on Mt. Desert Island, Maine. The property is actually an easement within Acadia National Park, and the objective was to make the landscape closely match its natural surroundings. Cunningham's task was to protect the residence, at the foot of 690 foot peak, from water gushing down the hillside — so there's a masterfully disguised infiltration trench surrounding the house that catches all the water.
A series of concentric pine duff trails take visitors to overlooks, a firepit, a dining terrace, all surrounded by native plantings of trees, shrubs, ferns, and mosses one would naturally encounter on the island.
In Chicago, McKay Landscape Architects won an Honor Award for a modern townhouse garden in Lincoln Park.
The clients wanted a cityscape that would also include the natural world, so there's a rich palette of perennials and ornamental grasses in the entry garden.
In the rear, there's a dining terrace and seating area with a bluestone floor and ipe fence nearby, and a seat wall that the children can use as a balance beam or reading nook. On the second floor of the house, up top, the designers have added a green roof with a vegetable garden as well as perennials and grasses reminiscent of the midwest prairie.
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