April 2005

Large Homes Often Sacrifice Landscaping, But They Shouldn’t

By Rachel Ezekiel-Fishbein

When Julie & Joseph Gronich were building their dream home in Rydal, they came very close to allowing a single mistake which would have hade a huge impact, reducing both their enjoyment of the home and its resale value. The Groniches had already had the property surveyed and were ready to break ground when they showed the plans to their friend, landscape designer Brad Baker, president of Wyncote-based Baker Creative. Baker immediately recognized that the home’s Northern exposure would provide the family with absolutely no natural light. With little wiggle room on the triangular plot of land, Baker suggested the family change the orientation of the home by a mere 10 degrees, which would allow the Groniches both morning and afternoon sun.

“ If we hadn’t changed the orientation, we would have had a totally dark home,” says Julie Gronich. “This was to be our dream house, and we would have been very unhappy. Few landscape designers would have understood the impact that the placement of the house on the plot of land would have; even the builder didn’t understand it. Now I’d recommend that anyone building a new home show their plans to a landscape designer who understands the total impact of the outdoors on a family’s enjoyment of their home; because once the house is built, you’re stuck.”

Orientation is just one of the reasons that families building new homes should consult with a landscape designer prior to breaking ground. Today’s newer, large-scale homes – often on smaller plots relative to the home size – present a host of engineering and landscaping challenges. When building new homes, most developers install only the most basic landscaping – a lawn, enough plant material to prevent immediate erosion, and what is minimally required by code for drainage. “You have just spent a half million dollars or more on your dream house, but you pull up and it doesn’t look like the showplace you envisioned,” says Baker, “because there’s a huge house with no landscape to enhance it.”

“ What’s more,” adds Baker, “it’s often not ready to accommodate your further exterior needs. Regardless of your initial landscaping investment, it makes sense to have your builder lay hollow conduit under your walkway, patio or driveway to set the stage for future lighting or irrigation installations and ensure easier repairs.” Another wise – but too often overlooked – investment during the building stage is a water outlet on every side of the house.

Due to the expense of land, many of the homes being built today are taller rather than broader. Thus they can dwarf the land on which they’re built. While excellent landscape design can bring the two components into balance, the expense of a full landscape installation – immediately after investing in a new home – can be daunting for many homeowners. The solution is investing the dollars you have into an initial installation that packs the most punch. “Concentrate your spending on the most important things first, rather than on volume,” advises Baker. “Larger plants, chosen carefully based on your home’s dimensions, will bring the landscape into scale with the home and can serve as focal points in the design. Not every element needs to be grand. By investing in just a few key plants, you free yourself to make choices such as spacing the other plants further apart and using smaller material to conserve money.”

For example, a 30- to 40-foot shade tree could serve this purpose. For a tall home on a narrow plot of land, Baker’s choice might be a 20-foot evergreen that will grow up, but not out. To complement a home on a wider plot of land, he might suggest making a 15- by 15-foot red Japanese maple the colorful showpiece of your front yard.
Hardscaping options also present wise investments that will help provide proportion to the scale of today’s larger homes. Most builders provide a minimal, three-foot wide entrance path. However, with a larger home a grander, six-foot wide walkway may be more appropriate. Baker regularly fashions front paths of varying widths, with the widest section highlighting the area leading to the front door. He also emphasizes special areas of the garden with decorative walls. By fluctuating a path’s width or designing a wall that stretches only a portion of the home’s expanse, Baker creates increased aesthetic interest while reducing materials costs to save clients money on these custom installations.

“ The materials you choose for hardscaping can really help with proportion,” says Baker. “I like to use larger stones and boulders to build landscape walls and retaining walls. I also encourage clients to consider vertical options for taller homes, such as trellises, arbors and pergolas. We create these pieces with larger widths of wood than you find in the prefabricated variety at home stores, again choosing larger materials to match the scale of the home.”

The Groniches have been in their new home for six years. Says Gronich, “the extra $850 we had to spend to get the house resurveyed when Brad suggested we change the orientation seemed like a lot of money at the time. Now I realize it was a very minor investment in truly getting our dream home.” Since then, Baker has designed, maintained and updated the Groniches’ landscape to provide beauty, interest and appropriate scale. And he is working with the homeowners to improve on the code-compliant drainage originally provided by the builder – which has not proved sufficient over time. Meeting the needs of the Groniches and other large-home owners has been a matter of bringing together good problem-solving and good design in one package.

Brad Baker is a Pennsylvania Certified Horticulturist. You can reach him at Baker Creative, 215-884-4978 or Brad@BakerCreative.com. To see his work, visit www.BakerCreative.com.

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