A Georgian Revival in Birmingham, Ala.

A series of outdoor garden rooms — each created based on the site's topography — pull the architecture of this beautiful Georgian home into the landscape. The spaces open and close as you walk through the site, which empties intoa concrete swimming pool draped in lawn and accented by a James Carter-designed open-air pavillion at one end. These outdoor rooms are terraced with native stone walls, the most dramatic of which is the elliptical boxwood garden with an allee of Winter King Hawthornes connecting it to the pool garden. GLA took meticulous care to retain as many of the mature boxwoods and trees as possible, evidenced by the 30-foot-tall Japanese Maple. It had been slated for demolition before we convinced the client that it was worth the time and effort to simply relocated the beautiful tree. It now sides 20 feet from its original location in a side garden — a splendid specimen visible from the front of the home.