“Is this really what we should expect if we use a designer?” Adam pointed across the street to a neighbor’s recently renovated landscape. Pretty, but unremarkable, a large lawn boasted a curved stone veneer wall with a bed of liriope and pachysandra. “We can go totally different. None of my projects look the same because none of my Clients are the same,” I said. That’s when I learned that Adam’s family moved to the DC area from California, and loved the little cape on a hill because once the shutters were removed and the door painted yellow, it looked remarkably modern despite being set along a typical suburban street with other typical cape houses, gardens, and picket fences. There had been a large holly tree in the front yard that came down in a storm, leaving half the yard covered in woodchips, and the other half a hodgepodge of path and steps attempting to navigate the steep slope down to the road. Later, when I met his partner Matt, I could see the balance between them and wanted to strike that in the project’s aesthetics. There was so much potential to bring Adam’s family’s background and personality to the project, and I couldn’t wait to get started.

Halfway through the project, I walk up to the site in construction. The major concrete wall has a long sinuous crack running through it. The exposed aggregate concrete path is not just exposing the aggregate, it isn’t even adhered. Adam, Matt, and I walk through the site, identifying errors such as cold pours, shifts in formwork, missed alignments. It has taken us a year of design, permitting, and value engineering to reach this point, only to be wrestling with the reality that things do not always go as planned. I feel electricity in my clients’ countenance. They each are at the edge of composure. “We are in the middle of the race”, I say. “But we are going to get across the finish line one day, and this moment will be a memory.” 

Now, when Adam and Matt walk up their new sinuous exposed aggregate concrete path, they wind through a California-inspired meadow. Grasses and fescues all lend texture and movement, and native perennials provide food for pollinators. At the apex, they enter their home from a new generous landing, or step down to a stone dust patio tucked against the house amidst the trees to relax in the shade. Each season brings new surprises – new colors, fresh blooms, grasses turning golden in fall, seedheads poking out in the winter. The days of construction are long behind them. Now it is time to sit back and enjoy.