This formal walled cutting garden is on a beautiful spot overlooking the Chickahominy River, and the south facing location allows for a wide selection of bountiful, bright flowers. Tucked into a corner of the house near the kitchen, it's easy for the owner to pop out and gather flowers for an impromptu arrangement. With this in mind, we used a mix of plants that bloom at different times of the year. The exuberant collection of plants is kept in check by the use of evergreen plants to give the design structure, and the garden is crisscrossed with paths making for manageable sized beds and easy access to the flowers.

Click here to read about some of the other areas we designed for this beautiful property.

For this project, the client asked for an all white courtyard garden. It was a great choice—the white flowers complement the white house and contrast nicely with the dark grey stone used throughout the courtyard. The small courtyard has a range of conditions ranging from full baking sun to near permanent shade, so we needed plants that could handle all the different areas. Fortunately, along with familiar white flowers like gardenia, there are plenty of white cultivars of other flowers to choose from. The garden is anchored by the white flowers of Franklinia, an unusual native tree. We augmented the white flowers with leaves in a wide range of greens. Here's a selection of just some of the plants we used:

We have a special interest in native plants. They have a natural beauty and give a strong sense of place to a garden. The owners of this project shared our appreciation of natives so we designed a front yard garden of sweeping curves using only native plants (augmenting some non-natives already on the site). We choose plants for a mix of colors and bloom times, using some of our favorite perennials, shrubs and a few small trees.