Pine Gate Drive — a new-construction backyard, built as one outdoor room

New construction leaves you with a house and not much else. The grade is rough, the yard is bare, and everything that will make the place feel finished still has to be built.

The back of the property was laid out as a single connected space rather than a patio with some planting around it. A paver terrace steps down through stacked stone walls into a lower seating area, with built-in stone benching along one edge so the furniture is not doing all the work.

Living space first

Dining table, lounge seating, a grill station and a fire pit each got their own footprint, sized so that people can move between them without walking through somebody else. Ornamental grasses and layered beds screen the edges and soften the stonework as they fill in.

Recognised by the MGIA

The project received a 2023 Gold Award for Residential Landscape New Construction from the Michigan Green Industry Association, in the fifty to one hundred thousand dollar category.