2023 Outdoor Design: Landscape Winner: Highgarden

The program for this home perched on the side of a mountain focused on maintaining and accentuating its panoramic views, creating an interactive landscape for gardening and outdoor hobbies, and maintaining accessibility to site features that allow for inclusivity for their entire family. Grade naturally falls away from the rear of the house, allowing the primary patio space to be sunken below the screen porch and lower level of the home, keeping views unobstructed from the inside. The custom-built potting shed, complete with a sedum-covered green roof, sits lower yet to maintain a free and open view from the patio, ipe deck and hot tub. Selections of low-growing garden plants further strengthen the goal. With gardening as a hobby for the homeowners, elements like the green-roofed potting shed and cedar-fenced vegetable garden were necessities. Site plantings are heavy with perennial flowers with staggered bloom times, such as rudbeckia, echinacea and salvia, which are great for cut-flower arrangements routinely brought into the house. Hardscaped ramps descend through the landscape to the central patio, fire-pit area and deck, allowing access to the hot tub.

Bonin Architects & Associates
New London and Meredith
(603) 526-6200
www.boninarchitects.com