The owner of this beautiful home in Manheim Township in Lancaster, PA decided to improve upon their home by having a local contractor build a small addition on their ground level. The back yard gave way to some steep slopes and a daylight basement. There was no walkway to give access to the back deck or from their rear garage entrance and the area for their existing hot tub didn’t have a lot of privacy.
There also was no area to entertain when walking out of the basement sliding doors. They decided to find a landscaping contractor to help them add function and beauty to their property. We were happy to have the choice among the many landscaping companies in our area. Our long relationship with this client gave us another great opportunity to find some innovative landscaping solutions.
On of our landscape designers, Paul Squierdo, and the client chose Unilock materials for the hardscaping elements of this project and we matched the existing Kichler Landscape Lighting in the front landscaping to help light the rear walkway, steps, and patio. Additional mulch beds with some planting of groundcover and shrubs helped to transition these new hardscape elements into the property. When finished, we installed sod to repair the lawn areas damaged from construction for an instantaneous new lawn.
This project was unique for many reasons. One of the unique characteristics of this project is the black accent banding we incorporated into the paver walkway, patio, and retaining walls. The walkway installed gave easy access to the rear areas from both the end of the driveway as well as the rear deck which the contractor had enlarged and connected to the new addition.
Since the lot drastically sloped on the rear of the house, there needed to be a functional transition from the upper areas behind the garage and off the deck, to the lower area exiting the basement that contained the hot tub. We used Unilock steps to create a stairs to the lower level and added more landscape lighting to give safety when navigating them at night. The contractor enclosed the area below the deck which allowed them to install a hand railing for more safety. In the area beside the stairs, we used some landscape boulders to help with runoff as well as installed some low-maintenance landscape planting that will fill in this area over time.
To create an outdoor living space or room, we used retaining wall block to create seat walls and pillars to frame in the paver patio, complete with the black banding accent. Because the addition above was supported with 6 large columns, we worked around them as much as possible, but contained 3 of them into a raised planting bed within the retaining wall block, another unique feature of this project.
The added space below the addition gave a nice shady area for the homeowner to add a dining set. To give some additional privacy for the hot tub, we installed some Green Mountain Boxwoods which will eventually grow into a low-maintenance evergreen hedge. We then placed some additional grasses, boulders, and groundcover plants, perennials, landscape lighting, flagstone stepping stones, and finished the project off with a fresh coat of mulch.
This landscaping project took a plain back yard to a multi-leveled area for entertaining. We love landscape projects that allow us to add more function to properties while creating beautiful outdoor living spaces. Whether you are contemplating the smallest of projects to one as varied as this, we would love for you to contact us. One of our experienced landscape design team would be happy to discuss your needs, solutions, and why you are in good hands if you choose us to be your landscaping company.
(more pictures below)
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