Chautauqua Area Garden Design
This landscape design is a tiny little garden near Chautauqua Park in Boulder, Colorado. The Chautauqua area has been a great area for us: we’ve done at least a half dozen garden designs, ranging from really big to very small, in the Chautauqua neighborhood. A big part of the garden is water, and we also put in a nice arbor.
In the foreground above on the left side of the photo, you can see a portion of a very interesting bridge-like construction across the water with three panels, perpendicular to each other, with the big panel going crosswise. It’s kind of a Japanese motif of crossing water. The owners cross the water at least a couple of times every day, when they go from their house to their garage, and when they come home.
And here’s another shot of this special private garden:
Garden Design Deck Photo
This is a new project I am working on, which I have dubbed the “Boulder Shangri-la”. It is a project that could not be built today, because it’s very large, and Boulder does not allow building that size anymore, but as a renovation it can be done. It’s right up against an extraordinary cliff rock formation, so when you step out of the back of the house, you are 30-35 feet from a sheer vertical rock wall. In Feng Shui, this formation is called a “dragon’s back” and usually monasteries are located in such places. The cliff ridge forms the back edge of the property. It’s very dramatic. Much of the rest of the property is on a steep slope. Coming up the driveway to the house, you get an amazing overview of Boulder and the plains. As the driveway goes up the steep slope, it makes a hairpin turn and doubles back, and then you see above you the house along the cliff. From a distance the house literally looks like a Tibetan monastery up there against the cliff. There are also some very large, beautiful Ponderosa pines among many smaller ones for which we will be doing fire mitigation.
I am really excited about this project. I was fortunate to be introduced to the general contractor at a friend’s party, and it just happened that he had also looked at some landscape design work I had done near Chautauqua in Boulder. This is the first of several posts I plan to write about this project.
Here is a photo of the entrance to the property as it is now:
"Boulder Shangri-la" Entrance Before Design Changes
We want to create an entrance that is really in keeping with this remarkable piece of property and the whole of the building and landscape architecture, which will be even more remarkable once we’re done with it! Here is a sketch I’ve done on tracing paper for the entrance design. In the background, you can see the same photo as above showing through the tracing paper, with changes and additions sketched on top:
Entry Gate Design for "Boulder Shangri-la"
More to come!
A garden I designed for the Mahaffy residence in Boulder, Colorado is featured in a very nice article in the current issue of Boulder County Home & Garden Magazine. This landscape design was a complete transformation of a mostly wild landscape into a serene landscape with natural themes and plenty of entertainment spaces. Here is just one photo of this residence.
Mahaffy residence, landscape design featured in Boulder County Home & Garden
What makes this article especially interesting are several “before” and “after” comparison shots, so that the reader can really get a sense of that transformation. Mahaffy himself had unique needs for his garden: A successful entrepreneur who recently sold his bio-tech company for $2.9 billion, Mahaffy now travels the world and values his garden as a refuge to come home to.
The Mahaffy landscape design features patios, a stone path leading to a koi pond, a man-made stream as well as a major natural creek, rock features involving large and small boulders carefully placed, and plenty of beautiful low-maintenance plants that thrive in Colorado.
The Home & Garden article also gives a nice expression of my some of my philosophical ideas:
“If I were to pick a theme for this garden–for any garden–it would be the idea of coming to our senses,” Altgelt says. “The garden is a place to feel your own soul in a much larger context of a soul-filled world.”
Here is the Boulder landscape design article, in PDF format.
This landscape design alternative, labeled #4, is my personal favorite of all the concepts that I created for NCAR.
Landscape Design Alternative #4 for NCAR in Boulder, CO
In this design alternative, the area in the upper right is sunken, with steps leading to flagstone paving at the bottom. You can see water cascading down the center of the steps to the bottom. This area becomes the focal point relative to the three other areas which are raised up high. These three areas form a kind of ampitheatre seating which looks down into the sunken area. Those three higher areas feature sitting steps. So this could be a venue for an award ceremony or marriage or other focal activity.
I often show this series of four alternative designs to potential clients, so they can see how wide the range of potential design can be. If we can find so many diverse concepts in a space with such tight design parameters, the possibilities really are endless.
After I presented these four concepts to NCAR, their committee requested something simpler, so I gave them a fifth landscape design alternative which, with modifications, is represented in the photograph of what was finally built.
Here is landscape design alternative #3 I presented to NCAR in Boulder, CO:
Landscape Design Alternative #2 for NCAR in Boulder, CO
The architectural style of this landscape design alternative is most akin to that of the building itself. The architect who was involved making minor modification to the building structure, Steve Loos, asked me to develop an alternative that reflected the architectural design gesture of NCAR as I.M. Pei had designed it in the early 60’s. This was really his launching pad to international prominence, therefore it was a very important building to him. He had taken his inspiration from the geometric forms of Anasazi cliff dwellings found in Mesa Verde. So with this alternative, I’m now trying to take these geometric patterns and apply them to the horizontal landscape, much as he had applied them to the vertical landscape.
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