Coming up Roses

Beds of roses, along with cherry laurel, peonies, ferns, spirea, lamb’s ears and campanulas, surround a water-lily pond fed by a semi-circular pool and runnel from a wall fountain. A pergola adorned with clematis and climbing roses leads to a pinwheel-patterned walkway. The roof of a newly constructed garage features a knot garden and four ironwork arbors. Owing to the design of Voith & Mactavish Architects, in collaboration with Victoria Steiger Garden Design – both of Philadelphia, PA – the previously barren backyard of a townhouse in the Rittenhouse Square area of Philadelphia now seems to belong more to a country estate than an urban setting.

From the rear of the house, the backyard space extends 65 ft. out and 21 ft. across. The garage was built in the back third of this area; the lower garden encompasses the intervening space. The design emerged from the client’s desire that the gardens were primarily to be enjoyed from within the house or in walking to and from the garage.

“There was a rubble yard in the back – it was a mess,” says Daniela Holt Voith, lead architect, Voith & Mactavish Architects. “One of the design goals was to create a gracious entry sequence from the garage to the house. The walk is punctuated by required turns to emphasize views. The rill, pergola and paving all were designed to provide interest, because the distance is rather long. Entering through the new garden door, the immediate view is of the main stair in a newly created ‘rear’ entrance hall that connects directly to the front hall. The door’s position in the house, its large scale and extent of glazing all speak to the desired sense of understated grandeur.

“It’s a big challenge of residential construction these days,” she says. “Many houses are designed with three ways to enter – a formal entry that gives access to the entrance hall, living room and dining area; doors that lead to the garden; and the way in from the garage. Experientially, many guests, but more importantly the owners, tend to regularly use their back doors for convenience’s sake. Unfortunately, the back-door entry is often hideous – one walks past the trash cans, the stored bikes, the laundry, the pantry.

“My thinking is that one’s daily entrance should not be equated with service, but with ownership. While this doesn’t have to have the same level of formality as the front door, it should at least be pleasant and attractive.”

From the garage, the owners now walk along a flagstone walkway surrounded by an abundance of carefully selected flowers and plants, along the flowing water of the runnel, through the pergola, down the pinwheel-patterned walkway – inspired by a pattern from Hadrian’s Villa in Italy – and into the house through the new arched entry door.

Victoria Steiger Garden Design was the landscape architect for the project. “When I interviewed the client, we talked about the program, and they didn’t imagine the garden as a place for sitting or dining,” says Victoria Steiger, owner. “They didn’t have a preconceived notion about the layout, but they were interested in maximizing the amount of plants they could have. They knew what they wanted to grow – one of the goals was to maximize the places they could have roses.”

Accordingly, beds of roses surround the water-lily pond and climbing roses adorn the pergola. Larger plantings include a magnolia grandiflora against the tall stucco west wall and a Japanese stewartia against the opposite wall. Throughout the lower garden, Steiger specified a color scheme developed around pinks, lavender and chartreuse.

“Cherry laurel is in the shady corner near the fountain wall, and on the left as you face the garage – together with ferns, epimedium and heuchera,” Steiger says. “In the sun along the water runnel next to the pavement, where it gets hotter, we have the lamb’s ears, nepeta, thyme, sage, campanulas and golden oregano. The chrysanthemum ‘Sheffield’ and Japanese anemone ‘Honorine Jobert’ occupy the middle ground between the pavement and the garden walls.

“The water in the garden, which begins at the wall by the garage,” she continues, “developed from the notion of the journey back and forth. The water follows you as you go. It’s an animating feature in the garden, so that in addition to color and fragrance there’s the soothing sound of flowing water as well.”

Partly because it can viewed from the third-floor bedroom terrace, the cultivated area on the garage roof has a slightly more formal design, which Voith equates to a French parterre garden. It features a knot garden composed of dwarf English box and dwarf red barberry, an ironwork arbor in each corner adorned with “Graham Thomas” roses and holly hedges along the parapet walls between the arbors.

The overall color scheme here is yellow, with burgundy and lavender purple accents. “In the corner knots are four tree peonies, ‘Sunrise,’ ‘Sunset,’ ‘Nike’ and ‘Zephyrus,’” explains Steiger. “They range from pale to gold, with burgundy flares or petals flushed at the tips with pink, and often the new foliage has a reddish tinge. The rest of the area is filled with bulbs and annuals, depending on the season.”

The ironwork arbors were inspired by the Geoffrey Jellicoe-designed gardens at Sutton Place, near Surrey, England. “I wanted to do something vertical without trees and boxes,” says Steiger, “and the arbors also add a framing element.” The arbor in the northwest corner also serves a practical function – a spiral staircase providing access to the roof winds up into it, synchronizing with the design while at the same time maximizing space.

The construction of the garage itself provided a challenge for the architect. Because it sits on clay soil – making it ideal for the kilns of the brickyards that occupied the area in the late-18th century – and needed to support large soil and potential water loads, 90 yards of concrete footings were poured 8 ft. down to stable soil.

Along with the creation of the gardens, the first phase of the townhouse renovation included the restoration of the front parlor, the creation of a large library and the re-design of the rear façade, which included the implementation of large doors at the southern end of the library overlooking the gardens. The view from the library takes in the entire garden complex, including the pergola and the garage-roof arbors. “The use of the pergola developed from trying to find more space for planting,” says Steiger. “In a small garden, one way to get more room is to go up. The pergola is helpful in lifting the garden up to you when you’re in the library. I thought it was a really useful device – when you leave the house, you’re coming down a long alleyway; the pergola is an extension of that into the garden.

“The spiral stairs, the arches on the roof of the garden, the pergola – it all fits in with the house, a house with very strong lines. That strength is carried into the garden – we weren’t afraid to be strong in the space. I saw the garden as visually extending the interior spaces, creating a consistent feeling from inside to outside – avoiding discord.”

Thanks to the collaboration between Voith & Mactavish and Victoria Steiger Garden Design, the gardens, completed in September of 2003, provide more than a formal rear entrance onto the property – they create an environment remarkable for overcoming both the limitations of the space and its former condition. As Daniela Holt Voith says, “the size of the space is increased by the complexity of the experience.” – Will Holloway

www.palladioawards.com
Restore Media, LLC is the producer and publisher of:

Copyright 2008, Restore Media, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Last Updated February 15, 2008