A house is, ideally, placed in its landscape.  There are a number of aspects to this which can go beyond the straightforward engineering to conform with zoning or health regulations.  For most of us a landscape may be more properly considered as a streetscape where the house’s position is dominated by its relationship to the neighboring structures.  This is can call for some remarkably innovative ideas: creating a cell tower that appears to be a church steeple in an historic district or an ultra modern building in a 17th century street which utilizes elements from the 17th century designs but is emphatically modern.  In the streetscape the lot is generally ornamentation, functioning like the paint and trim to express both individuality and the house’s relationship, or lack of relationship, with its neighbours.  It is absolutely critical to the house; but it is part of the house and is best described as an outside room.   

However, if the lot size is large enough the focus is shifted towards the landscape as an entity.  (It should also occur with the creation of subdivisions, though these are rarely done with an eye to design.)  While it is a rare property that does not pay some attention to its neighbors, either in the form of completely blocking the view or by using them as part of the view, a large landscape is more than an outside ‘room’.  Rather it is character and structure equal to the house in complexity and importance. 

Landscape design is a formidable topic, but one goal of the designer is to balance stopping the eye and encouraging the idea that there is something beyond that would be interesting.  Over time, because landscapes are comprised of things that grow, these views can be obscured.

This change in the landscape can be quite profound, I mentioned in the post on WWE washing windows that the far hills were fields in that photograph.  Today they are trees with a sprinkling of houses, most only visible at night.  The immediate landscape has also changed, the property’s own fields have grown into woods, and in particular, the clear definition of hedgerows, stone walls, and the promise of something beyond the next field has been obscured.  We are slowly working on restoring the hedgerows.   There are two reasons for this work: the first is aesthetic, restoring the concept of a larger visual space that ties the house not only to the far view from the top of the hill, but also to the more intimate view of the pond, stone walls, fields and woods.  The second is environmental: the removal of invasive species and the encouragement of quality young maple, oak, hickory as hedgerow trees and native shrubs, mostly apple, vibrunum, dogwood, sassafras, etc.

It is slow going, mostly done by hand since stonewalls and stock wire do evil things to chainsaws, but we will get there!