"In organic architecture...it is quite impossible to consider the building as one thing, its furnishings as another and its setting another...All these must work together as one thing."  Frank Lloyd Wright  

When Jeff and Jane Leffingwell decided to build their new home, Jane began with the garden foremost in mind.  An avid gardener, Jane "always wanted the new house to have a real connection with the garden."  Chris Keyser, RA (Registered Architect, not resident assistant as an architect friend assures me), their architect, completed his assignment brillantly. 

Although traditional in style and detail, the house evokes a Japanesque sense of the close relationship between home, garden and daily life.  The dining room is set in the center of the house, with French doors opening on one side to the entry courtyard and opposite onto the back garden patio.   With the terraces on the same level as the interior, the bluestone floor literally flows from the courtyard into the dining room and out again onto the back patio, creating a large cohesive indoor/outdoor room. 

Additionally there is a third small terrace off the kitchen. 

Located in three separate and complementing microcosms, the terraces provide a place to be outside most days of the year.  A glass panel covered arbor captures the heat of the sun on the south side of the house, making it ideal for winter evenings or early summer mornings.  The entry courtyard on the west side of the house catches the afternoon and evening warmth while the back garden patio to the east is cool on hot summer days. 

The garden is viewed and featured from every room.  The windows are slightly taller, beginning lower so even while sitting inside, the landscape is fully in view. 

A solid backbone of stone, trees and shrubs is dressed with roses, flowering perennials and grasses, abundant in color and texture from both foliage and bloom.

The softness of the organic stone and plantings are brought into focus with the linear cleanness of brick-lined crushed rock paths, bluestone patios and boxwood hedges of the parterre and entry courtyard. "The more the landscape matures and longer I live and garden in it, the more I appreciate the structure to the garden and how it all works together," Jane observed three years after settling in. 

The house and gardens are designed for gracious living, albeit with three grandchildren often in attendance, the peanut butter handprints tell the rest of the story.  But then a home that can move from gracious entertaining to exuberant family gatherings to comfortable daily living while keeping its poise and character is a true success.  I suspect Mr Lloyd Wright would agree.