Landscape Architect: Studio FARM Landscape Architects
Landscape Contractor: Land Design Associates
Photographer: Overlook Photo
Studio FARM Landscape Architects is a design firm located at the foothills to the Berkshires, guided by the mission to create landscapes that steward life and elevate our experience of it.
At our recently completed Puddingstone Ledge project, we had the chance to partner with wonderful clients in pursuit of this mission. This project is a great example of the outsized impact a small garden can have when it is designed with both people and ecological function in mind.
Nestled in the back of a newly built three-unit townhome in a dense neighborhood of Jamaica Plain, MA, natural drama abounds within the 50 by 60-foot plot that is Puddingstone Ledge. This compact site contains a level clearing of compacted construction fill, steep slopes covered by a mature canopy of Norway maples, and large puddingstone outcrops that protrude from the hillside. Studio FARM was tasked with creating a series of gardens that heighten this drama, support a flexible indoor-outdoor lifestyle, and provide habitat for wildlife.
We knew from the beginning that we wanted to create a special moment at the puddingstone outcrop. It is the defining feature of the site, a vivid geologic remnant reminding us of our ties to the earth. Physically touching stone is incredibly grounding, helping to focus our thoughts on the present and what our senses are relaying to us. This heightened awareness of the senses is crucial to those special garden moments we’ve all experienced, when our worries fade to the background and we feel the day’s stress falling away. Working with the clients to achieve such a space, we designed a custom black locust bench that is cantilevered directly off the face of the puddingstone. Located at the edge of the tree canopy and at the top of a small rise, the bench’s positioning creates a journey that sharpens the sense of arrival, creates separation from the other garden spaces, and amplifies the feeling of scale.
In small gardens like this, it is critical to consider how design elements can serve multiple purposes simultaneously. Entry to the garden is through the home onto the rear deck, or via stairs along the side of the home. Previously, the transition from the stairs to the garden felt abrupt. Arriving at the top of the stairs deposited the homeowner and guests right next to the deck, with no chance for new arrivals to orient themselves. Lack of a discrete arrival space also detracted from the experience of those enjoying the deck who lacked an adequate degree of spatial enclosure to feel comfortable. To resolve this spatial relationship, we used a new grill wall to separate the new staircase landing from the outdoor living spaces. The now-separated landing allows new arrivals a chance to take in the garden, before taking the pathway around the grill wall and into the outdoor rooms. The new spatial sequence creates a lovely gateway experience, while simultaneously increasing the degree of refuge enjoyed by the garden’s users.
The deck and grill wall serve as a back porch to the house, whose entire rear wall of floor-to-ceiling windows retracts, opening up to create a hybrid indoor-outdoor entertainment space. The open-concept indoor living spaces flow out into the landscape, providing impressive flexibility for hosting a wide range of gathering sizes. New plantings dissolve into the deck’s outer edge, creating an intimate garden setting and inviting people to explore further into the landscape.
Extending off the deck, bands of bluestone interplanted with thyme and wild strawberries lead to a smaller patio nestled in the new plantings. The patio provides an immersive garden experience where the homeowners can sit back, relax, and unwind at the end of the day. This secondary patio is especially unique during twilight hours. The Adirondack chairs offer a magical view back towards the house. The main deck is bathed in honey-toned light from the home, and several small path lights highlight pockets of planting in the approaching darkness.
While the human-oriented programming of the space is intensive, an equally intensive approach was applied to the ecological function and sustainability of the gardens.
From the outset, the team’s goal was to create a neighborhood hotspot for wildlife through a focus on robust, predominantly native plantings. Prior to the start of construction, the gardens were largely bare unconsolidated construction fill on the level area, and a thinly soiled slope containing Norway maples, white wood aster, and invasive garlic mustard. Given the conditions, the team pursued a dense and diverse planting strategy to jumpstart the revival of natural cycles on the site.
We planted 827 plants representing 33 different species in the gardens. Over 80% of the new plants are species native to the area, including critical hosts plants required by specialist insects to survive and reproduce. These insects will be caught by birds raising their young, and so on and so forth up the food web. Special consideration was given to bloom types and timing as well, ensuring something is in bloom at any given time. This will provide a year-round habitat patch for pollinators in search of nectar and pollen. In addition to supporting the food web, the new plantings have the added benefit of improving water retention and infiltration on site.
Water management was front of mind in considering the new hardscape. Extra wide rice stone joints between the bluestone pavers allow water to drain through and down into the open graded gravel base. Planted joints between the pathway banding provide an even larger joint to paver ratio, and act as small dams, slowing down surface water flow during downpours so it can percolate into the soil.
The function and impact of this garden is considerable given the overall size of the project. However, people may point out that the new bluestone pathways and seating area could have been used for even more ecologically productive uses. While this is true from a certain quantitative sense, the argument fails to grasp the invaluable human quality of it. This space was designed to intentionally blur the line between space for humans and space for everyone else. Instead, we seek to design shared spaces, where both humans and all the other species we share this earth with can flourish together. It is pressingly important that we find ways to cohabit our gardens. Such spaces are needed for the intimate interactions necessary for the formation of emotive and visceral connections to healthy landscapes.
We humans tend to value what we know. The deeper and more personal the understanding, the more value we will assign. Beyond the direct effects of a garden on natural processes, perhaps its most important and lasting impact is to provide connections between us and the rest of the living world. What may at first glance appear a compromise is actually a win-win. We find joy in experiencing and living amongst nature in our gardens. In doing so, we come to better know, and better value its inherent worth. Because we value the joy that comes from watching a sweat bee gather pollen from Saint John’s Wort and the song of a cardinal foraging for a snack in the serviceberry tree, we in turn become better stewards of and advocates for the land.
In this way more than any other, small gardens like Puddingstone Ledge may have the largest impact. Our clients have already excitedly reported seeing several new bird species visit their gardens in just the first two weeks since the plantings were finished. While we look forward to watching these gardens fill in and continue to support more life, the largest impact of these gardens will be the strengthened communion between the land and the people who inhabit it.
Christopher Ramage is a licensed landscape architect and the founding principal of studio FARM. Chris obtained his Masters in Landscape Architecture from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and previously studied agriculture and ecology at the University of Delaware. From an early age, Chris understood the power of landscapes to contribute solutions to our most pressing problems. It was first learned intuitively from summers spent in his family’s vegetable garden and exploring the creeks near his childhood home in Virginia. This early understanding of how landscapes affect our everyday lives continued to deepen over his years of study and practice.
Chris’ research has been published and presented nationally, including at the American Society of Landscape Architects’ 2023 National Conference. His design work has garnered awards from ASLA, MassINC’s Gateway Cities Innovation Institute, and the Edmund M. Bacon Student Urban Design Competition. Prior to starting studio FARM, Chris worked as an associate and project manager at Matthew Cunningham Landscape Design, one of New England’s leading residential design firms.
