Yard of the Week: Lake House Landscape Composed Like a Symphony
A beautiful design solves drainage and erosion problems on a North Carolina lakefront property
Landscape designer Jay Sifford was taken with his clients’ contemporary home on North Carolina’s Lake Norman at first sight. “The house is really cool. It kind of looks like a boat that washed ashore, or a spaceship that landed here,” he says. What he was not taken with was the barren landscape, which was full of crabgrass and had drainage issues. He played off the architecture when choosing plants and other materials for the new landscape design, weaving a tapestry of colors and textures. At the same time he addressed drainage problems by designing a dry creek bed in the front yard and erosion problems with plantings along the lake shore.
Drainage issues plagued the front yard. The combination of the downspouts, a lack of gutters on some of the roofline’s overhangs, water running from the front yard toward the house and hard clay soil resulted in standing pools of water along the front of the house. To address the drainage issues, Sifford designed a dry creek bed to collect and move the water instead of allowing it to pool. Now the water runs along the rock-lined creek bed toward an existing box drain in the side yard.
Aesthetically, the dry creek bed provided an eye-catching structure in the garden to plant around. On the right, Sifford anchored a corner where the dry creek bed, the house and the driveway meet with a weeping Japanese maple (Acer palmatum ‘Ryusen’).
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Sifford played off the architecture of the house with colors and materials. In the spring, the coppery colors of the autumn ferns (Dryopteris erythrosora) complement the orange hues in the home’s stained cedar siding. He also selected plants that would thrive in the location with minimal additional irrigation required, placing plants that need more moisture like ferns and astilbes in the areas that receive water runoff from the roof.
The Tennessee rocks Sifford chose for the dry creek bed and other ornamental boulders match the stone around the base of the home’s facade. “I placed some of the boulders close to the house. This way they look like they are emerging as part of the foundation of the house and add strong 3D elements to the garden,” he says.
The separate structure is a carport. It has a storage room beneath it, accessible on the lake-facing side of the house.
“The homeowners are here in the warmer months. So while I planned for year-round color and interest in the gardens, I planned for colors that look their best during that time,” Sifford says. The azaleas with white blossoms seen here bloom during the spring.
“The homeowners are here in the warmer months. So while I planned for year-round color and interest in the gardens, I planned for colors that look their best during that time,” Sifford says. The azaleas with white blossoms seen here bloom during the spring.
The foliage of ‘Midnight Masquerade’ beardtongue (Penstemon sp.) adds deep purple-maroon color to the garden. It plays off the colors seen on the home’s roof.
At the beginning of the design process, the homeowners weren’t sure about installing the expansive planting bed Sifford designed along the driveway. “Once they saw how awesome the dry creek bed and plantings looked along the front of the house, they wanted me to go ahead and do more,” he says. He created curved lines along the edge of this bed to soften the straight lines of the architecture.
Sifford had to build up this bed with topsoil so as not to disturb the soil stratification in the adjacent septic field. And he chose plants that could handle the clay soil beneath the topsoil. “This planting bed makes the home look more inviting from the street,” he says. He planted three narrow Alaska cedars (Chamaecyparis nootkatensis ‘Van den Akker’) that will grow up to 25 feet high. As they mature, they will provide structure in the garden that will stand up to the home’s tall proportions.
Sifford had to build up this bed with topsoil so as not to disturb the soil stratification in the adjacent septic field. And he chose plants that could handle the clay soil beneath the topsoil. “This planting bed makes the home look more inviting from the street,” he says. He planted three narrow Alaska cedars (Chamaecyparis nootkatensis ‘Van den Akker’) that will grow up to 25 feet high. As they mature, they will provide structure in the garden that will stand up to the home’s tall proportions.
The silvery-blue blades of the lyme grass (Leymus arenarius ‘Blue Dune’) can be seen in the foreground of this photo. The deep purple-maroon color of the Ginger Wine ninebark (Physocarpus opulifolius ‘SMNPOBLR’) foliage provides strong contrast in the garden. The ninebark blooms in late spring to early summer, with the blossoms giving way to pretty red seedheads as summer turns to fall.
The blossoming ninebark shrubs provide a nice view from the driveway. These will grow to be about five feet tall.
This photo shows the contrast between the leaves of the ninebark in the center and the blades of the feather reed grass (Calamagrostis x acutiflora ‘Karl Foerster’) on the right.
Backyard Tapestry of Plants and Textures
This area on the lake-facing side of the house shows the areas beneath the carport and terrace. The sidewalk on the left leads to the storage room underneath the carport. The sidewalk on the right leads to the terrace.
“This was kind of an octopus-like little intersection. I wanted to make it feel like it was immersed in a meadow,” Sifford says. He used a mix of dwarf fountain grass (Pennisetum alopecuroides ‘Cassian’s Choice’) and Belleza gaura (Gaura lindheimeri) as the show-stoppers in this area. “The pennisetum can be considered invasive, but here in the clay soil they are much slower to spread and can be kept under control,” he says.
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This area on the lake-facing side of the house shows the areas beneath the carport and terrace. The sidewalk on the left leads to the storage room underneath the carport. The sidewalk on the right leads to the terrace.
“This was kind of an octopus-like little intersection. I wanted to make it feel like it was immersed in a meadow,” Sifford says. He used a mix of dwarf fountain grass (Pennisetum alopecuroides ‘Cassian’s Choice’) and Belleza gaura (Gaura lindheimeri) as the show-stoppers in this area. “The pennisetum can be considered invasive, but here in the clay soil they are much slower to spread and can be kept under control,” he says.
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The mix puts on a big show in late summer, and moves with the lake’s frequent breezes.
There was only room for seating around half the existing fire pit, so Sifford added a gravel half-circle and boulders around it.
“There were erosion problems on the shore, so we held the soil with a lot of grasses.” he says. He had to consider the views of this part of the landscape from the lower patio, the terrace above it and from the lake toward the house.
He repeated the dwarf fountain grass in large masses to structure the beds along the lake shore. Then he added contrast with more ninebark shrubs and switchgrass (Panicum virgatum ‘Shenandoah’). “There’s a lot of wind here, so it was fun to play with plants that would provide kinetic movement,” he says. He edged the lake beds in brown steel garden edging.
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“There were erosion problems on the shore, so we held the soil with a lot of grasses.” he says. He had to consider the views of this part of the landscape from the lower patio, the terrace above it and from the lake toward the house.
He repeated the dwarf fountain grass in large masses to structure the beds along the lake shore. Then he added contrast with more ninebark shrubs and switchgrass (Panicum virgatum ‘Shenandoah’). “There’s a lot of wind here, so it was fun to play with plants that would provide kinetic movement,” he says. He edged the lake beds in brown steel garden edging.
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“I used a lot of happy shapes out back, and I wanted to create a textured tapestry,” Sifford says. He brought in other plants to add a mix of berries, seedheads, evergreens and colorful foliage and flowers to his happy symphony here. For example, beautyberry (Callicarpa dichotoma ‘Early Amethyst’) brings in prominent leaves and deep purple berries.
Here’s a closer look at the contrast between the texture and colors of the grasses and the ninebark shrubs.
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Landscape at a Glance
Who lives here: This is the vacation home of two doctors, who live a 1½-hour drive away.
Location: Terrell, North Carolina
Designer: Jay Sifford
Architect: Miller Nicholson of Mcclure Nicholson Montgomery Architects
Front Yard Dry Creek
“I think of music a lot when I’m designing, and I like everything in a garden to work together like a symphony,” Sifford says. “I like to compose the plants to flow together nicely and speak to each other to reach a big crescendo — without any jarring staccato. We all need that peace right now.”
One big issue dictated where Sifford could not plant in the front yard. “They had a 50-year-old septic system they knew they’d need to replace soon. I didn’t want to plant thousands of dollars worth of plants in that area just to have them have to rip them out and start over,” he says. A good portion of the grassy area in the front yard is the septic field, as Sifford kept the planting beds outside any area that would be affected by installing a new system in the future.
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