A Modern Meadow Garden: A Lakefront Landscape
Featured in Modern Richmond’s September 2024 Tour
Just two blocks from Hull Street, a tucked-away lakefront property reveals an unexpected oasis. Perched above the water, the home and landscape were designed to create a natural connection between architecture, garden, and the surrounding landscape.
Soaring windows capture expansive views of the lake, sky, and surrounding trees, while a raised outdoor living space overlooks a meadow garden filled with grasses, wildflowers, birds, butterflies, and bees.
The landscape design was an opportunity to work with the natural character of the property, thoughtfully incorporating stone, planting, and pathways to create a garden that feels as though it has always belonged there.
Designing With the Land
The property presented significant changes in grade between the home, meadow, and waterfront.
Rather than working against those natural conditions, the landscape design embraces them.
Natural stone was incorporated throughout the property, including stacked stone retaining walls, freeform stone patios, natural stone steps, and stepping stone pathways. These elements help navigate the steep grade changes while creating a sense of permanence and connection to the surrounding landscape.
The stonework and planting work together to create a series of outdoor spaces that feel connected to both the architecture and the land.
A Meadow Garden With a View
One of the defining features of the property is the Modern Meadow Garden.
The raised patio overlooks the meadow, with views continuing toward the lake beyond. The shoreline is part of an easement and has been intentionally managed to preserve healthy native trees and understory plants.
The upper slope features a textural palette of ornamental grasses and colorful blooms that soften the landscape while creating movement, habitat, and seasonal interest.
The garden was designed not simply to be viewed, but to become part of the experience of living in the home.
In its first year, the meadow was newly graded and ready for possibility.
By its second year, grasses had begun to fill in and a wildflower seed mix brought additional color, movement, and habitat to the space.
Planting for Beauty and Habitat
The plant palette combines ornamental grasses, perennials, annuals, shrubs, and trees to create a garden with interest throughout the seasons.
Native and pollinator-friendly wildflowers provide food sources for birds and pollinators while adding bursts of color throughout the meadow.
Featured wildflowers include Black-Eyed Susans, Blazing Star, Coreopsis, Purple Coneflower, Cosmos, and Blue Flax.
Ornamental grasses bring another layer of texture and movement, including:
Panicum virgatum 'Heavy Metal' Blue Switch Grass
Panicum virgatum 'Ruby Ribbons' Switch Grass
Panicum virgatum 'Shenandoah' Switch Grass
Muhlenbergia capillaris 'Pink Cloud' Muhly Grass
As the seasons change, the meadow shifts with them, from fresh spring growth to summer blooms and the warm textures of grasses glowing in the fall light.
Creating Privacy Around the Home
With open views from both the front of the home and the patio, creating a sense of privacy was an important part of the landscape design.
Evergreen plantings were introduced around the home to provide screening, winter interest, and a consistent visual framework.
Nellie Stevens Holly and Japanese Cryptomeria create height and structure, while evergreen boxwoods provide a lower, rounded form that frames the home and patio.
The planting choices were intentionally consistent in shape and texture, allowing the architecture of the home to remain a focal point while surrounding it with a sense of enclosure.
Four Seasons of Interest
The landscape was designed to continue changing throughout the year.
Spring begins with the bright yellow blooms of 'Spring Glory' Forsythia. A 'D.D. Blanchard' Magnolia adds evergreen structure and fragrant white blooms in late spring.
Through summer, 'Little Lime' Hydrangeas transition from lime green to white before aging to pink, while 'Alice' Oakleaf Hydrangeas bring both flowers and rich fall foliage.
Along the driveway, 'Natchez' Crape Myrtles provide white summer blooms and striking exfoliating bark during the winter months.
By fall, pink Muhly Grass catches the light across the meadow while the mature trees throughout the property shift from green to shades of yellow and orange.
Each season adds something new without losing the overall structure of the garden.
A Landscape Designed for Living
This outdoor living space is an intentional extension of the home and its surroundings.
The landscape design creates places to gather, paths to explore, views to enjoy, and habitat for the birds and pollinators that make the garden feel alive.
The result is not simply a collection of plantings around a home. It is a landscape that responds to the land, works with the existing grade, frames the architecture, and changes with the seasons.
A garden designed to feel at home in its surroundings.
Landscape Design: Wendell Welder Landscape Design
Landscape Installation: James River Nurseries
Home: Perkinson Homes
Photography: Wendell Welder and property owner
Featured In: Modern Richmond Tour, September 2024
Interested in creating an immersive landscape experience for your own home? Contact Wendell Welder Landscape Design to discuss your custom landscape design.
