Home Port Stunning, close-up views of Annapolis Harbor give this waterside townhouse an added dimension. During its renovation, contractor Lynbrook of Annapolis rebuilt the third-floor deck, which now affords picturesque views of the marina below. Interior designer Allen Holmes enhanced the 10-by-10-foot space using stylish, modern furniture that can be collapsed and stored for convenience. A table and chairs from Royal Botania are positioned beneath a Paraflex wall-mounted umbrella so diners can enjoy al fresco meals—and the view—in comfort. Architecture: Scarlett Breeding, AIA, Alt Breeding Schwarz Architects, Annapolis, Maryland. Interior Design: H. Allen Holmes, ASID, H. Allen Holmes, Inc., Hobe Sound, Florida. Builder: Lynbrook of Annapolis, Annapolis, Maryland. Photography: Tim Lee.
Designing a waterfront, Shingle-style home on Maryland’s Gibson Island, architect Christopher Frank of Hammond Wilson was able to make the most of the property’s location on pristine Redhouse Cove. Frank’s plan included an alcove off the family room with a bay window that affords views on all sides. This semi-circular space is used as a game room, so Frank installed built-in window seats that emphasize the watery vistas while offering extra room for guests. Coffered beams and a bead-board ceiling add further visual interest. Project Architect: Christopher Frank, AIA, LEED AP, Hammond Wilson, Annapolis, Maryland. Interior Design: Marcy Sagel, MSA Interiors, Baltimore, Maryland. Builder: Pyramid Builders, Annapolis, Maryland. Photography: Anne Gummerson.
Zoning required that a new Maryland home situated in a cove off the Choptank River adhere to the footprint of a dwelling that once occupied the site. Due to the narrow footprint of that original structure, the new building, designed by Mark McInturff, stacked upward three stories. “It’s like a modern Ark,” says the architect, “with a pool on the rooftop.” To support the house’s height and weight, McInturff used cross-braced steel frames that also serve as indoor architectural elements. On the open-plan first floor, multiple sliding doors turn living spaces into a porch while spotlighting tranquil water views. Architecture & Interiors: Mark McInturff, FAIA, McInturff Architects, Bethesda, Maryland. Builder: McInturff Architects.
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Every year, the Landscape Contractors Association (LCA) of Maryland, DC, and Virginia recognizes exceptional garden design throughout the region. This annual competition is judged by industry experts, who vote in more than a dozen residential and commercial categories. Get an insider’s look at some of 2015’s winning projects using the links below.
Botanical Decorators
GardenWise, Inc.
McHale Landscape Design, Inc.
Quayle & Company Design/Build, Inc.
Rossen Landscape
Scapes, Inc.
Scott Brinitzer Design Associates
Surrounds Landscape Architecture + Construction
Through the Garden, Inc.
Walnut Hill Landscape Company
Grand Award for Outdoor Living Area (Design/Build)
A parking pad in the rear courtyard of a house in downtown DC completely restricted the outdoor-living space. The owners hired Rossen Landscape to transform this problematic area into a usable, secure private yard in which they could entertain and where their child could play safely. The Rossen Landscape team replaced the concrete pad with a usable rear garden space with a comfortable seating area and substituted the old courtyard walls for new brick ones that match the brick on the house. Curving steps transition from the elevated patio to the lawn and a gated brick archway offers a secure entrance to the rear garden. Emerald Green arborvitae shield space from view and an outdoor kitchen area, complete with built-in grill, storage, and an oversized ice trough, finishes the space.
Outstanding Features
Rossen Landscape
P.O. Box 650970
Sterling, VA 20165
703-327-2284
rossenlandscape.com
Photos © April Sullivan, Rossen landscape
Grand Award for Total Residential Contracting (Design Build)
The Hoffman garden began as a blank slate surrounding a newly renovated home. The hillside along the left front lawn is now a limestone walk interspersed with a creeping mazus ground cover; it bisects a bed that blooms throughout the growing season. The open front lawn is now smaller, with crape myrtle and Endless Summer hydrangea flanking the street. A planting bed along the street gives the new front lawn a sense of privacy, encouraging its use as an outdoor room—perfect for a game of badminton. The back garden now boasts a large flagstone terrace centered on a stone fireplace bordered by two stone walls. An iron wisteria trellis wraps around the flagstone terrace, knitting the outdoor kitchen, dining area, stone seat wall and fireplace into one garden space.
Outstanding Features
Scott Brinitzer Design Associates
2300 9th Street South, Suite 304
Arlington, VA 22204
703-892-0266
brinitzer.com
Photos © Roger Foley
Grand Award for Outdoor Living Area (Design-Build)
This Severna Park homeowner was looking to remove the property’s old, worn-out decks and create an outdoor living space to enjoy spring, summer, and fall. The addition of an expanded upper deck off the master suite allowed for covered living space below and automatic screens was installed between the deck columns to ensure a space for insect-free relaxation. On the patio outside the covered room, a massive stone fireplace beckons. The structure encompasses niches for storing wood and extends to the right of the fireplace to create an outdoor kitchen. Because of the proximity, the owners can easily entertain guests while preparing food close by. Sitting walls along the perimeter of the patio eliminate the need for additional seating for large groups of guests and help frame out space.
Outstanding Features
Scapes, Inc.
Annapolis, Maryland
410-867-6909
scapesinc.net
Through the Garden, Inc. Distinction Award for Front Residential Planting and Entrance Way (Design/Build)
The clients were so enamored with the front entrance feature, a large black-granite fountain from the Black Forest—previously designed and constructed for them by Through The Garden—that when they decided to tear down their house and rebuild on the same site, they wished it to be removed prior to demolition and reconstructed in the exact same manner for the new house. The landscape plan included meticulously reconstructing the entry feature; terracing the rear and side yards and connecting them by formal and informal steps; building a patio outside a “man cave” that was part of the new-house design; incorporating the existing pool and tennis court to ensure a harmonious blend of all elements; and installing low-voltage lighting for a magical nighttime experience.
Outstanding Features
Through the Garden, Inc.
Design offices in Great Falls, Virginia, and New Market & Brunswick, Maryland
800-724-9008
landscapeasart.com
Grand Award for Craftsmanship
Quayle & Company is a design/build firm specializing in high-quality exterior architecture. Our team creates environments that enhance the beauty of nature and blend seamlessly with a client’s home. For a project on the Severn River, Quayle & Company faced a major challenge: How to unify the disconnected existing exterior spaces to take advantage of their waterfront setting. The solution created a cohesive flow from one area to another by enlarging spaces, offering more points of access and opening up views. The result is a stunning transformation that encompasses multiple levels of the home and incorporates a new screened porch off the main living area with a stone fireplace, a wrought-iron spiral staircase leading to an enlarged lower-level flagstone patio and an outdoor kitchen for entertaining—to name just a few features.
Outstanding Features
Quayle & Company Design/Build, Inc.
8 Evergreen Road
Severna Park, MD 21146
410-647-1362
quayleco.com
Photos © Quayle & Company
Distinction Award for Outdoor Living Area (Design/Build)
The task assigned to GardenWise, Inc., was to integrate a swimming pool into the rear of the town home’s largest contiguous space—the lower garden level—while ensuring enough room for poolside lounging. A dynamic, two-tone travertine marble pool deck was selected and laid in a diamond pattern, alternating darker and lighter tones. A broad staircase highlights the poolscape, providing visual and physical flow and offering casual, stadium-style seating. A large, cobalt urn dominates a water feature that creates a focal point, visible from an elevated dining terrace on the upper garden level, located on the opposite side of the pool. The urn matches the blue-tile border at the water line on the inside edge of the pool, and is echoed by other planters located throughout the two-level terraced space.
Outstanding Features
Gardenwise, Inc.
4111 18th Road North
Arlington, VA 22207
703-243-5982
gardenwise.com
Photos © Michael K. Wilkinson
Grand Award for Outdoor Living Area (Design/Build)
This small backyard on Q Street in DC’s Logan Circle neighborhood was a blank slate. The clients wanted a simple, modern garden that would complement the clean-lined style of their interiors. Our design incorporates a large arc of granite cobblestones that borders a panel of artificial turf to visually expand the narrow property. Pennsylvania flagstone set in concrete in a staggered pattern suggests a loose-sand pathway. Eighteen-by- 36-inch stones repeat the linear proportions of the window mullions. A hand-hewn granite plinth creates a raised fountain and the six-foot-wide side yard is now an outdoor grilling area. Sweetbay magnolias are up-lit to create views from the kitchen. Lush but simple plantings—including espaliered camellias, clump-form bamboo, coral-barked Japanese maple, yellowwood and hornbeam trees—soften the edges of this urban site.
Outstanding Features
Botanical Decorators
5011 Olney Laytonsville Road, Suite B
Olney, MD 20832
301-948-6625
botdec.com
Distinction Award for Outdoor Living Area (Design/Build)
Surrounds fashioned this landscape to reflect the clients’ love of their natural environment. The unselfconscious appearance of the landscaping belies its structural complexity. Four primary-use areas are connected by meandering walkways that cleverly incorporate the property’s changing elevations. Grade changes are subtle in some places but steeper and more dramatic in others. Starting at the house, stone steps wind down to the open-air grilling/dining patio. A few steps further down, a spa was installed by a patio made of huge, asymmetrical stone slabs; a mountainous fireplace stands on one side. A set of gently winding steps leads to the pool, and from there, low grass steps—neatly trimmed with bluestone cobbles and shouldered by raw, uncut rock—lead to an expansive lawn where kids can play.
Outstanding Features
Surrounds Landscape Architecture + Construction
21580 Blackwood Court
Sterling, VA 20166
703-430-6001
surroundslandscaping.com
Grand Award for Outdoor Living Area
This idyllic location on the Severn River provides an outdoor oasis for the homeowners, who wished to enjoy their property with family and friends against the backdrop of breathtaking waterfront scenery. The Walnut Hill team worked closely with Campion Hruby Landscape Architects to implement a conceptual plan centering around a large, oval swimming pool with a vanishing edge, surrounded on three sides by a flagstone patio. The owners wanted to bring the comforts of home outdoors, so a cabana was designed that contains a bathroom, utility room with washer and dryer, outdoor kitchen/bar and outdoor shower. A large cedar pergola defines the entrance to the property from the driveway, while providing shade for the seating and dining areas. Extensive plantings of shrubs, perennials and grasses finish the job.
Outstanding Features
Walnut Hill Landscape Company
Annapolis, Maryland
410-349-3105
Easton, Maryland
410-690-0977
Grand Award for Outdoor Living Area
The new backyard features upper- and lower-level outdoor living spaces, a vanishing-edge pool, and a flagstone/aggregate pool deck. A custom wrought-iron railing on the upper level is painted to match the new decking, which is made of Azek to withstand harsh weather conditions and the shaded location of the wooded site. An under-deck loggia is an intimate outdoor room, with a dark-stained, tongue-and-groove cedar ceiling offset by columns and trim made of white-painted PVC. A wall of sliding screens can be closed to create a screened porch or opened to the adjoining patio. Clean, geometric flagstone details, stone retaining walls and architectural railings frame the pool and reinforce the contemporary design. This elegant outdoor living space comes alive at night with strategically placed lighting.
Outstanding Features
McHale Landscape Design, Inc.
6212 Leapley Road
Upper Marlboro, MD 20772
301-599-8300
mchalelandscape.com
2014 COTY MERIT Award: Residential Addition $100,000 to $250,000
Like most Colonial homes, the original floor plan featured rooms boxed off from one another. Owners with a growing family wanted an open-concept layout with plenty of natural light and more space for entertaining. Sonny Nazemian of Michael Nash Design, Build & Homes met the clients’ needs with a two-story addition extending the breakfast area on the main floor and adding a bedroom above. The renovated kitchen and breakfast area offer a brighter entertaining space, and an airy sunroom/family room completes the project.
Outstanding Features
Michael Nash Design, Build & Homes
8630-C Lee Highway
Fairfax, Virginia 20031
703-641-9800
michael-nash.com
