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Landscape Tour: 2 Thirds of Rural Hillside in Maine

After two retired educators built their dream house, their property has been basically two acres of mown grass. The couple loved the rustic Maine landscape, and they were not interested in mowing two acres every week. So they called in landscape architect Matthew Cunningham to decrease the maintenance needed and help their house match in better with the rural landscape.

For inspiration, Cunningham looked to the environment and to good old-fashioned land management methods. Important facets of the design included restoring the huge meadow into a naturally wild aesthetic, embellishing the panoramic views, ringing the home with much more formal plantings and developing a lively arrival sequence in the street up into the home. Plantings were designed with colour and seasonal interest in mind, and recently carved paths permit the customers and their laboratory, Kuli, to journey by foot to view their nearby children and grandchildren.

Landscape in a Glance
Who lives here: A retired couple; extended household within walking distance
Location: Penobscot, Maine
Size: 2 acres
That’s interesting: The customers were their landscape architect’s algebra teachers in high school.

Matthew Cunningham Landscape Design LLC

An ornamental orchard of crab apples was planted in the front of the original barn, along with a perennial border in the foreground includes catmint and spirea.

Matthew Cunningham Landscape Design LLC

“We let former yard places to migrate into manicured meadows,” explains Cunningham. The region shown is now a hayfield that’s mown and mulched once a year.

Matthew Cunningham Landscape Design LLC

Spectacular indigenous plant communities shortly returned into the meadow: rushes, clover, grasses, daisies, Queen Anne’s lace, thistle, goldenrod, rue, vetch, lupine, buttercups and much more. Wildlife immediately followed.

Matthew Cunningham Landscape Design LLC

While the home is fresh, its design gives a nod to the area’s farmhouses. The look works well with the regenerated hayfield.

Matthew Cunningham Landscape Design LLC

“You may observe the whole region from the home,” says Cunningham. “To the left you visit Acadia National Park; into the best, Blue Hill Mountain. The hayfield adds a gorgeous foreground into the expansive perspective.

Matthew Cunningham Landscape Design LLC

More meticulously planned perennial gardens and shrub borders were placed closer to the home. While the gardens were created, the mixture of textures, colour and species gives them a gentle, casual look.

Cunningham was gardening in Maine since he was nine years old, so choosing plants for this particular project came naturally. The plant colour palette is predominantly green, purple, silver and pink throughout spring and summer, and transforms into yellows, oranges, rust and cranberry red in the autumn. “The backyard still looks great when the first frost hits,” he states.

Matthew Cunningham Landscape Design LLC

“The shrub and perennial borders around the home draw the eye” Cunningham says. They create soft edges and thresholds involving the domestic area of the yard and the meadow.

These boundaries combine perennials with deciduous trees, plus they create a ringed perimeter round the home. Again, Cunningham was careful to select species that have powerful multiseasonal characteristics. Plants include forsythia, red twig dogwood, iris, hydrangeas, lilacs, rugosa roses, coneflowers, spirea and daylilies.

Matthew Cunningham Landscape Design LLC

When you look closely in the background, you can see bright sunflower blooms popping through the fog. They are a part of the customers’ vegetable garden.

Matthew Cunningham Landscape Design LLC

Here is a good look in the rugosa roses in the shrub borders. “Rugosas are magnificent in the autumn,” says Cunningham. “The foliage is a lemon-butter yellowish, along with the increased hips turn a gorgeous cranberry color”

Matthew Cunningham Landscape Design LLC

Cunningham was hired following the driveway had been installed. “Since the driveway was essentially a straight line in the path to the home, I included a grove of sugar maples to create a lively entrance order,” he states. “It’s also very common to see amazing double allĂ©es of sugar maples lining driveways in the region, so this is a reinterpretation of the historic neighborhood element.”

“This region is blanketed in fog about a third of this moment, so that I picked the pine trees because of their interesting silhouettes,” says Cunningham. Additionally, sugar maple leaves turn fiery red in the autumn.

Matthew Cunningham Landscape Design LLC

Other parts of the property comprise very lightly managed woodlands. This means these forests were cleaned up and their borders are preserved through the yearly hayfield mowing. The customers allow natural succession to continue inside the woodlands.

Matthew Cunningham Landscape Design LLC

Paths carved through the meadow were an important part of the master plan, as the couple’s children and grandchildren live close by. “Their children live down a country lane; although there’s not much traffic on those roads, people have a tendency to drive too fast on them,” says Cunningham.

Matthew Cunningham Landscape Design LLC

Kuli the puppy joins the daily walks.

Matthew Cunningham Landscape Design LLC

Cunningham photos his endeavors through different weather conditions and seasons. This picture gives you a glimpse of the customers in addition to a look in the walnut, maple and ash trees in autumn.

The master plan shows how the mown lawn, perennial gardens and shrub borders casually demarcate the domestic section of the yard. You also can see the significance put on the trees and paths. Now that the setup and cleanup phases are complete, the owners may enjoy a gorgeous functional landscape that embodies the qualities they adore around Downeast Maine.

More:
Old-School Design: Frame Your Own Garden View
Virginia Wine Country Cottage
10 Elements of a Beautiful Winter Garden

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