Before & After: A Modern Landscape Design for a Traditional Washington, D.C., Home

Landscape architect Joseph Richardson’s clients wanted to create a better connection between their stately Washington, D.C., home and its surrounding garden, while also bringing more light inside. But Richardson, who is the principal of Richardson & Associates, quickly realized this was not merely a landscape problem. “There was a much bigger opportunity here, and without some changes to the architecture, we would have ultimately been very limited in what we could accomplish in terms of their goals,” says Richardson, who suggested calling in Chris Lyon of Lyon Architecture to help with the project.

Lyon and Richardson came up with a plan to add a solarium onto the back of the house. With windows and sliding glass doors on all three sides, the solarium would bring much-needed light into the house and deepen the connection to the garden beyond. On a more practical side, the room could also do double duty as a mudroom, which the house previously lacked. 

Lyon made another key architectural intervention that connected the house to the outdoors: adding a roof deck. The existing screened-in porch was reinforced to accommodate the new deck, which adjoins the primary bedroom and is accessed through newly-added doors. Once the improvements were finished, Richardson stepped back in to redesign the garden.

The client wanted an outdoor dining area, a basic outdoor kitchen, a lounge area, a firepit, and a water feature. An avid gardener herself, she also had a long wish list of plants, including hydrangea and roses that were placed in the sunny front yard. In the backyard, the deep shade from the mature willow oak determined a palette of boxwood, ferns, and other shade-tolerant plants.

Here are Richardson’s tips for making over your outdoor space for maximum beauty and functionality:

Photography by Kate Wichlinski.

Take stock.

Before you do any daydreaming or designing, Richardson suggests walking your property, taking notes and photographs of the existing conditions. As part of this fact-finding step, he also says to observe the circulation and drainage. “If we understand a property’s constraints, we have a better idea on how to solve them,” he says.

Keep what works.

While the garden renovation was extensive, Richardson largely kept the existing perimeter fences. “We went through an analysis of whether we remove the fence and replace it, and the client’s idea was just to plant a lot in front of it,” says Richardson. In a pleasant surprise, they also discovered that the brick wall that had been covered in English ivy was quite handsome. Richardson had masons repoint the wall where the bricks were starting to pop out and planted delicate jasmine and  European hornbeams in front of it, so that the brick would still be visible.

Design for circulation.

In addition to plotting out outdoor rooms, Richardson says it is key to think about circulation in the garden. “We really think a lot about how guests would make their way around the property,” he says. “We want to create a design that is not just beautiful but very functional.” In the redesign, there are clear, purposeful paths directing you around the property.

Create a hierarchy for your hardscaping.

It’s important to consider what path material goes where. In some projects, Richardson uses a hierarchy of paving as “a subtle way of wayfinding,” using less formal materials/designs for secondary paths and more structured ones for the main pathways. For example, in this garden, the clients didn’t want to see a lot of paving between the driveway and the backyard, but it would be in frequent use, so Richardson designed a path with joints planted with creeping Jenny that will eventually fill in and soften the edges of the stones.

Get your water feature right.

Richardson’s client requested a water element that would be mostly a reflecting pool with just a subtle element of sound, so Richardson designed a shallow pool with a water bowl at one end that sends a spill of water into the 5 ½-inch deep basin. A 2-inch layer of dark Mexican beach pebble in the pool enhances the reflections. 

Don’t be afraid to mix modern with traditional.

Richardson says it’s fairly common in the DC area for a client to buy an older home with traditional architecture, but personally prefer a more transitional or even modern aesthetic. To marry the two looks, Richardson and Lyon strategically painted the solarium black, which makes the traditional architectural details recede. Then in the landscape, the fountain, furnishings and the materials and how they’re used with the hardscaping skew more modern. 

See also:

• Before & After: A SoHo Roof Terrace Goes From Drab and Lifeless to Delightful and Lush
• Before & After: Removing a Pool to Unlock a Garden’s Potential
• Before & After: A Modern Landscape Fit for a Finca in Los Angeles