This client contacted us after moving into a newly constructed home in a rural setting, a first for our client who was used to a more urban lifestyle. An avid birder, she fell in love with the picturesque setting; the adjacent highly ecologically diverse wetland at the edge of her property. What she quickly realized her new home was now just another house amongst a series of homogenous grass yards in a housing development contributing to a lack of diversity and actually driving away the bird species she came to live with. She wanted to do something different, something to show neighbors there are other options for a yard and ways to connect to the surrounding nature that she moved here for.
The house was built a year prior on a heavily sloped lot that heads straight into the wetland, where the moles seemed to take a liking to the new sod. As a result we proposed a series of native planting zones of both shrub massing and grass/perennial massings the acted as the border of the property with no mow grass zones closer to the home. This inverse design accentuated the uniqueness and juxtaposition of the neighboring landscapes while offering sublime backdrops to our custom made fences and the wetland.
Since working on this property, we were fortunate enough to encounter a pair of Sand Hill Cranes and a Sphinx moth in addition to many small bird species (including all 3 woodpeckers!), pheasants, turkeys, eagles, owls, foxes, coyotes, deer, and bear that grace her property.
