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Structure at the Garden Home Retreat

One of the challenges I faced in designing the Garden Home Retreat is balancing utility with beauty. This was especially important when it came to selecting and siting garden structures that would play supporting roles to the farm and garden. Landscape structures need not be purely functional; they should be used as design features as well. So instead of just creating a place to store my tools, I looked for a small building that created a focal point, built continuity through the garden and added pizzazz to the surroundings.

My toughest job was finding that balance in each garden structure for the property. The prospect of designing and building everything from scratch was overwhelming. To make the job easier I broke it down into 3 options - ordering pre-constructed items, revamping existing structures and creating my own designs.

Here are the results of combining the 3 options. Some of the structures are large, other quite small, but they all add to the beauty of the setting as well as serve a function.

Sometimes It's Better to Let Someone Else Do the Work
Many of the gates, fences and sheds that I selected for the Garden Home Retreat are pre-constructed. The items were shipped as a kit and assembled on site. All I had to do was pick out what I wanted and hire a handyman to help with the assembly.

Entry Gates
Walpole Woodworkers Annesquam Scallop Double Drive Gate with Radius Side Panels
These gates and side panels mark the entrance to the Garden Home Retreat. They are a sign post announcing to visitors that they have arrived. They also serve as a style marker, giving a hint of what to expect from the rest of the property. So even though the cottage and farm are not visible from the entry gates it is important that they match each other. This pulls the entire property together and makes for a seamless transition between the public and private worlds. This principle applies even in smaller gardens where the house is visible from the front entrance.

Vegetable Garden Fence
Walpole Woodworkers Old Fashioned 4 Rail Fence
This fence runs the length of the vegetable garden. The nifty thing about it is that it comes in sections with semi-circle posts at each end. The fence is constructed by joining 2 semi-circles with a wooden dowel. This will come in handy if we ever need to remove a section of the fence.

Garden Arbor and Gate
Walpole Woodworkers Elliptical Arbor with Yorktown Double Gate
There is a great deal of open space at the Garden Home Retreat. It is important to help define the space so that the composition is not open ended, causing a visitor to become visually lost in the surrounding landscape. This arbor and gate not only marks the entrance and exit, but it anchors the garden. There is one positioned at either end of the upper terrace. An added bonus is that the elliptical arch serves as a frame for the view beyond. The body of the arbor is made from cedar that has been painted a soft green, with the rungs over the top of the arch in rough hewn cedar branches. The branches tie the arbor in with the cedar tuteurs standing in the perennial border and the green color connects it to other structures such as the grape arbor and windows in the milk barn..

Greenhouse
European Garden Royal Victorian
This is the first year that I have successfully grown sweet peas and I attribute that success to the greenhouse at the Garden Home Retreat. Because I was able to start the seeds extra early, the plants had a chance to mature and bloom before the heat set in. A greenhouse is a structure where function can easily dominate over form, but this one is very stylish. The glass panes and simple architect fit in perfectly with the rest of the buildings at the Retreat.

Orchard House and Honey House
Walpole Woodworkers 10 foot x14 foot Building, custom design
I've designated these two buildings as the orchard house and the honey house because one will be used to store supplies for the fruit tree orchard just behind it and the other will hold the tools for honeybee hives. What I like about these sheds is that although they are pre-constructed at the factory I was able to customize the design.

Martin House
Walpole Woodworkers High Point Purple Martin House and Post
Even the smallest structures contribute to the big picture. As a child I remember being fascinated by martin birdhouses sitting high above the ground so I really wanted to have a martin house at the Garden Home Retreat. This one looks very similar to the cottage. It's a fun way to offer a place for these wonderful birds to nest and bring a little whimsy to the garden.

Incorporating My Own Designs
With the help of local craftsmen I was able to design some of the structures myself. It's not as difficult as it might seem. I collected images of things I liked and did some crude sketches. I hired an architect to draw up the blueprints for the larger structures, but my doodlings were enough for local work men to build the small items such as the grape arbor and tuteurs.

Gate Houses
The first sign of the Garden Home Retreat from the road is a large double gate as mentioned above and these two gate houses. The gate houses have a native flag stone veneer that has been lime washed. Inside the walls and floor are concrete. The plan is to acid wash the interior concrete, a project that has been on the to do list for 6 months but we still haven't started yet. For anyone who has built or remodeled a home, I'm sure you are familiar with those projects that keep getting pushed ahead to sometime in the future. The roof is the same metal Follansbee KlassicKolors red that is used on the cottage and outbuildings on the farm.

Grape Arbor
The tunnel arbors on either end of the vegetable garden are comprised of a series of six metal arches connected with cross bars constructed by a local welder. The arches are anchored in the ground with concrete footings. They are painted the same soft green as the arbor and gates mentioned above. This same green is also found on the window trim on the milk barn and the barn lights. Repeating the color throughout the garden unifies the structures. Read about the grapes I'm growing at the Garden Home Retreat.

Cedar Tuteurs
I suppose the tuteur is one of my signature structures. What is nice about a tuteur is that depending on the design and material used, one of these free standing trellises can be used in any style garden. A simple, metal tuteur works in a modern garden, while at the Retreat these rustic cedar structures fit right in. The material is repeated in the rungs of the gated arbors at either end of the terrace. Tuteurs are a great tool for adding height to plant compositions and when several are used in a series, they create a sense of rhythm in a border.

Working with What's There
The Garden Home Retreat was not a blank slate when I arrived on the scene. It had been used as a farm between the mid-19th and early 20th centuries so there were existing elements that just needed a little TLC. Here are some examples of how I added to what was already there.

Chicken House
This building falls under the category of "work with what you have" because it is built on top of an old boat trailer. I sketched the design I had in mind and handed it off to a talented carpenter. In a short period of time he put together what you see. To continue the theme of continuity, the outside of the chicken house is stained the same color as the milk barn and the tractor barn. Read more about the chicken house.

Dry Stack Retaining Walls
One of my favorite features left over from the original farmstead were the old terraces used by farmers before me, and just barely visible after all these years. These lines etched into the landscape gave me a series of contours to follow for building a series of dry stack retaining walls. So rather than re-inventing the wheel, I had a guide for laying out the garden. These walls are made even more special because we used rock from the site to build them. The colors in the rock inspired the brown, moss green and red that is repeated throughout the property. Read more about building dry stack retaining walls.

Milk Barn
In spite of its advanced state of neglect, or maybe because of it, I immediately fell in love with the little milk barn. It was the first building to receive attention. With new cypress siding, red metal roof and dark stain it was as good as new. It's the first building to come into view on the drive up to the Retreat.

Tractor Barn
This metal building was originally just about function and its modern look did not fit in with my vision for the rest of the property. Rather than throw it out, I decided it would be a better idea to just give it a makeover. Steel trusses were added to the top to raise the roof line, a cypress siding wrapped around the exterior and a red metal roof and two cupolas placed on top to transform this utilitarian building into a barn that blended in with the style of the rest of the buildings. View a slide show detailing the tractor barn makeover.

Product Guide

• Walpole Woodworkers - Gates, arbors, and martin house
• European Garden Greenhouses - Victorian Greenhouse
• Course Doctors - Dry Stack Retaining Walls
• Follansbee Roofing - KlassicKolors Red Terne Roof