A Low-Maintenance Garden for Alexandra's Extreme Conditions

How It's Looking

Before The Plant Store


The Brief
The design aims to situate the house within its expansive surroundings, complementing Alexandra's rugged landscape. The plan focuses on hardy plant selections that can withstand the area's extreme climate. The client requested a wide-scale overview plan that allows the planting to be installed gradually over time.

Our Design

Plant Palette

Why We Chose the Plants
The site posed several challenges, including frost, snow, intense heat, high winds, poor soil, and rabbit activity. Plants were thoughtfully chosen to align with the client’s vision of a striking, resilient, low-maintenance landscape. The design aims to integrate the house within its expansive surroundings, evolving over time as the project progresses.

Grassy, strappy plants like Chionochloa rubra, Chionochloa conspicua, Miscanthus, and Carex secta thrive in the dry, windy conditions, adding a natural, wild aesthetic. Their soft, flowing forms mimic the region's native landscape, creating a cohesive, low-maintenance ground cover. Shrubs such as Phormium Emerald Green, Muehlenbeckia astonii, and Hebe’s are used to provide structure and diverse textures through the garden. 

Around the house, drought-tolerant flowering plants like Lavender, Cistus Snow Mound, Rosemary, Sedum Autumn Joy, Phlomis, and Stachys offer seasonal interest and frame the house walkways and key access points. For vertical height and anchoring, loose groupings of Acer rubrum, Nothofagus fusca, Sophora microphylla, and Amelanchier canadensis provide natural focal points while adding strong accents across the landscape. 

At The Time of Planting & A Few Months On
 

Project Costs
Planning: $1,295.00
Plant Supply: $47,432.40

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