In addition to stabilizing the bluff and creating the Living Wall, the team also built a trail down to the Lake Michigan beach and designed and installed a cantilevered deck at the top of the bluff.

The project received a 2015 Award of Merit in the Residential Category from the Wisconsin Chapter of the American Association of Landscape Architects (WI ASLA).

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The project was the first one highlighted in the “Wisconsin Great Lakes Restoration Projects Producing Results for People, Communities” publication produced by the Healing Our Waters-Greats Lakes Coalition and provided at the 2013 Great Lakes Restoration Conference.

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The softscape features include three native plant communities; woodland, meadow, and prairie. The plantings were also placed within stepping stone walkways, natural stone planters, and woodland paths.

Hardscape features include dry stacked walls using collected fieldstone, limestone planters, and a fire pit. The fieldstone was collected from a Waukesha County farm and retains moss and lichens, adding to its “always there” appearance. A fieldstone “fence” provides reference to the lands’ agrarian roots, while suggesting an architectural extension of the house. Dry-laid New York Bluestone was used for walking paths and patios. Weather-edged Lannon stone was used to mimic bedrock outcroppings where the landscape meets the bluff. Recycled granite pavers, from a roadway project in Milwaukee, were used for the driveway to lend an “Old World” look to the fore-court of the house.

Other designs completed for the residence include an extensive lighting plan that subtly accents the major features of the house and garden and the planning & implementation of an extensive bluff stabilization.

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The limestone patio and the water feature uses an intricate stone work and fine craftsmanship. In the water feature, stored rainwater is pumped up to the surface and bubbles from the client’s antique sharpening stones to meander down a narrow cobbled stream through the patio and back to the storage system. The water feature provides a tranquil vision and quiet respite from the stresses of the day.

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The upper 100 square foot flagstone patio follows a black locust plank boardwalk down the bluff to a 260 square foot covered terrace overlook. The overlook patio was constructed with a mixture of flagstone and black locust log “cookies”. The back retaining wall consists of black locust logs and the cedar log roof was covered in engineered soil with coir matting and planted with nearly 200 plugs of native grasses and forbs. Black locust stairs continue down the bluff from the overlook and descend to the covered boathouse. The boathouse was constructed of dry stack stone with a Douglas fir beam roof finished with custom copper shingles. The boathouse faces 500 square feet of flagstone patio and a custom fire pit with five large limestone rocks for seating.

Another fun and challenging aspect of this project was the rerouting of a natural spring on the property to create a recirculating water feature. Additionally, Marek utilized a steep slope restoration technique that uses a compost- based bio-engineered soil matrix with close to 50 species of native plant grasses, sedges, and forbs to increase initial stability, weed resistance, and early native plant germination.

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The project was a finalist for the Milwaukee Awards for Neighborhood Development Innovation (MANDI) – Brewers Community Foundation Public Space Award in 2012. Here’s a video about the project that screened at the award ceremony.

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Natural stone stairs lead into the patio space lined with cor-ten steel, floating black locust benches, and two custom cor-ten steel planters. Ten-foot black locust posts were installed in the corners to allow for café-style string lights to be hung. Ten square feet of concrete, which made up much of the original patio, was removed to increase the available planting space. A pattern was cut into the portion of concrete that was not removed to add texture and blend in with the transformed landscape.

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“We put the bio in bio-engineering”

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