NATURAL LEGACY

GREENWICH \ CONNECTICUT

Garden allee of nepeta and bamboo supports for incoming dahlias against a white farmhouse.

NATURAL LEGACY

GREENWICH \ CONNECTICUT 

The Stanwich estate, with its six rolling acres, owes much of its beauty to its 19th-Century architecture. Which is why, when it came time to create their dream home, the owners tapped JDDA to come up with an integrated landscape design plan that would both honor history and address the clients’ contemporary lifestyle. From the outset, attention to detail was key, and the team went to great lengths to ensure that every aspect of the landscape plan harmonized with the period references of the original 1846 house. Working with a site-specific strategy, overgrown trees and brush were cleared to reveal a framework of unique structure. For the exterior plant schemes, the team drew inspiration from the surrounding countryside and the clients’ love of seasonal color. Starting directly across from the parking court and grand front entrance, a new meadow feels magical, almost inevitable, and hardly designed at all. Here, a vibrant array of native grasses and flowering perennials—including allium, yarrow, and beardtongue—offer a rotating presentation of color and texture provide and a habitat for local wildlife. The resulting modern-meets-romantic aesthetic works to engage the senses and achieves the brief to provide our clients with a practical, everlasting retreat that honors history.

RECOGNITION

‘Enchanting Gardens’, Veranda \ 2025

McKim, Mead & White Award \ 2022

Veranda Outdoor Living Awards \ 2022

Palladio Award: Exterior Spaces \ 2022

COLLABORATORS

Diane Bilgore, DAB Design

PHOTOGRAPHY

Allegra Anderson

Neil Landino

sheared hedges and topiaries against a white farmhouse. Wisteria climbs a trellis along the top of the garage.
Front entrance of the farmhouse with two benches and sheared boxwood hedges flanking the walkway to the door.
two tall stone pillars mark the entrance to a perennial garden with an old barn in the background.
small gravel garden with an antique trough water feature enclosed by old stone walls.
small gravel garden with a teak table and teak chairs at the center and an antique trough water feature.
wetlands meadow in the foreground and a pond in the background.
chickens roaming in a large chicken coop.
close-up of a chicken.
gif close-up of the water bubbling in the antique trough water feature.
close-up image of the antique trough water feature framed by perennials and boxwood globes planted in the gravel garden.
simple site plan of the meadow.
close-up of foxglove seed pods after flowers have flourished.
close-up of grass meadow.
close-up of a purple allium.
close-up of a cephalaria flower.
pathway mown into a meadow of grass, alliums and foxglove with a large maple tree hanging over and the front entrance of the house in the background.
close-up of a black planter with a specimen tree and cosmos and ivy as a filler.
an opening in the hedge of the perennial garden reveals the chicken coop in the background with lamb's ear, nepeta and allium planted in front of the hedge.
view of the dining terrace with the old barn and pond in the distant background.
broad view of the herbaceous borders of the perennial garden with the stone pillars at the entrance.
broad view of the property with a grass meadow in the foreground and the white farmhouse in the background.