REAL ESTATE RENOVATION
Home & Garden Extreme
In this beautiful home on Georgia’s South-east coast, we created a garden by dissecting the whole into rooms to enjoy on a Sunday morning or an evening with a drink. The live oaks were trimmed to almost mirror the bonsai collection of 50 and counting; fabulous specimens are dotted around the property. The garden design was implemented by our friend Mark Owens, whose input was so important to ensure that the flowering cycle through the year was perfect and that all the plants would thrive in the warm humid sea air.
The tree house is the perfect place to look over the “rooms” of the garden. From here you can see the niche between the staircases winding down from the area in front of the house, the fountain with reeds and waterlilies at the garden’s end and the alley with an armillary sphere, which is the center of a corridor, flanked on both sides by miniature boxwoods. The backdrop – a brick pedestal with a bronze cherub atop with espaliered pear trees on either side against the wall.
INSTALLATION NOTES
Brick, Iron, Blood & Bronze
As dusk approaches the light starts to gently pick out the rooms, the picture changes as the contrast of the lit areas against the black backdrop gives a theatrical air to the garden.
On the marsh side of the house again we have rooms – a dining-room by the grill and stove top covered with bamboo canopies on steel posts, a fire pit with cast iron fire back tiles to warm you as you watch the sunset over the marsh, and a Jacuzzi sheltered from the sun’s rays by a pavilion, built with reclaimed timbers; in the background a headless nude sculpture flanked by espaliered pears and the bronze Castor and Pollox fountain to the fore.
The whole house is built with Savannah gray bricks. The deck constructed with Ipe wood, and the Bermuda shutters fabricated of 316 stainless steel with thick cedar planking.
