It's not uncommon for us to walk away from a project friends with a client. That was the case here. This job was the third episode in our series of five as guest designers for the HGTV show “Landscape Smart.” It's safe to say we're still recovering from our brief foray into the world of television... and I'm guessing we speak for Sean and Allison, too.
Built in an old Saint Paul neighborhood in the early 1900s, their home presented a perfect opportunity to join modern design with traditional surroundings. It's one of our favorite challenges. We often encounter people that would be willing to fill the interior of an older house with modern gestures, but are uncertain about the two vernaculars existing side by side on an exterior. We feel there can be a very powerful relationship in bringing together two very different aesthetic tones; we talk about it sometimes as a 'musical' connection, similar to the perfect connection that might be made in a folk song that employs a vintage thrift store keyboard alongside a resonant cello.


We created a design here that utilizes corrugated fiberglass panels for fencing. Although the translucence of the panels was originally desired to brighten the shady areas of the backyard during the day, we found that by night, tea candles placed on its framing made the fence a more sculptural, dynamic element of the space. We used New York Bluestone to create a large traditional patio and basic 2' x 2' concrete squares as walkways to connect the different areas of the yard.


When one of the cameramen for HGTV returned to the space after we had finished filming to shoot the incidentals, he called us to say he'd spent the entire afternoon there with his phone turned off, in silence, and expressed how much he felt the space was transcendent. We took that as a huge compliment.