A clean, contemporary garden layout designed around simple lines, layered planting, and a quiet seating area tucked away from the main house.
The Challenge
This backyard had good bones — decent size, reasonable sun exposure — but the existing layout was a leftover from the previous owner and didn’t match how the new homeowners actually wanted to use the space. A dated paved patio sat awkwardly off-center, planting beds were overgrown and shapeless, and there was no real spot that felt like it was designed for sitting outside and unwinding.
The Solution
Rather than working around the existing patio, we reset the layout entirely around a simple, clean geometry — straight lines and a restrained material palette that let the planting do most of the visual work. A new paved seating area was positioned to catch the best light in the evening, tucked slightly away from the house for a sense of separation without feeling disconnected from it.
Planting was layered in a limited, considered palette rather than a wide mix of species, with structural shrubs anchoring the beds and softer grasses and perennials filling in around them. The result leans into simplicity rather than density, which suited both the homeowners’ style and the lower long-term maintenance they’d asked for.
The Result
The garden now has a clear sense of purpose — a quiet retreat rather than a space that just happened to exist behind the house. The seating area gets used regularly, the planting has filled in cleanly around the simplified layout, and the whole space reads as considered rather than assembled from whatever was already there.