A modern fence creates a stylish entry and enclosure for the dog.
Modern Entry for Portland Hillside Home
Unique Front Entry Needed a Creative Solution
My client has a good design eye and she loves modern architectural style and modern style landscapes. However, her new home in Portland’s West Hills had a boatload of difficulties and she wanted a collaborative garden designer who would value her vision and strive to enhance it.
The first view of the house as you approach from the street is the roof. It’s a classic landscape problem for hillside homes. This is as far from welcoming as you can get. You can’t see the front door at all. The amazing view is in the back and the front yard is small, shallow and often below the road.
Basset Hounds are adorable, but not made for multiple flights of stairs! Source
Courtyard for Curb Appeal
An modern styled entry courtyard would solve curb appeal, make a private sunny sitting area and give us an architecturally interesting entry appeal. I was prepared for hours of preliminary design to create the perfect enclosure for the courtyard. Instead my client found a photo that was the perfect inspiration and the design came to life.
Courtyard is Dog Friendly
My client loves her dog. We needed to accommodate the family Basset hound. The entry area is the only easily accessible outdoor place for the dog. The idea of a Basset hound with such short legs going down three sets of stairs, so he can potty in the backyard is torturous and potentially harmful for his back and hips. The enclosed courtyard is perfect for keeping the dog safe from cars and predators.
Designer’s Solutions
The fence would cut off views of the entry from the street even if it was a short fence. We accepted this and made the fence an attractive, visually strong presence on its own. We went taller with the fence to block the view of any parked cars and headlights.
The courtyard fence needed to be subordinate to the house. This meant it could not be too visually powerful.
- Using the concrete wall at the base of the wood fence gave us two materials which adds interest and lessened the feeling of height from the street view. The height also steps down to follow the slope which makes softens the effect of it’s length.
- The fence line also steps back (or bumps out) to break up what would otherwise be a long straight line. Each section that steps back is the length of the 10 foot long entry windows. By repeating the 10 foot length in the fence sections, we easily integrate the house and courtyard fence.
- Repeating a line that is prominent in the architecture of the house in the landscape is a classic way to integrate the two together. The step back also creates valuable planting space along the inside of the courtyard walls.
- We removed the 1970’s brick facade on the house entry and replaced the tired aggregate and brick concrete walk with mortar set square paving stone.
Plantings for the Courtyard Walls.
The plantings for the exterior of the courtyard walls (out on the street side) are tricky. The first section has crushed rock. It’s designed for guest parking. The other step back sections create room for a mass planting of evergreen ornamental grass. Carex Morrowi ‘Ice Dance’ was the most low maintenance option.
The entry gate area plantings are very simple and rely on two pots, one larger, one smaller and a very low bright lime colored evergreen ground cover to go around the pots such as cushion bolax, Azorella trifurcata ‘Nana’ . The charcoal colored dyed concrete base of the fence needs the relief of bright and light colored plants.
We created the planting plan for the courtyard interior, and designed an echo chamber water feature to enhance the entry experience and to enjoy while sitting outside on sunny days.
The existing rockery style walls inside the courtyard were built with stone that was too small. It doesn’t look great with the new modern style. Our design replaces 1/3rd of the retaining wall with large boulders. It is surprising to see that large boulders look and feel so good even in small spaces. Small rock jumbled together to make a wall is rarely attractive and is far from a modern style landscape.
The final touches of the design are still in progress and I am looking forward to seeing the plantings completed.
If your hillside home is in need of a remodel, make an appointment today!Contact
My client Sherry has been in her 
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One of the common mistakes with Manzanita is to underestimate the width of the shrubs and small trees. Most cannot be pruned heavily and can be rendered so unattractive by pruning that tries to contain them, they will be removed. If you have no pruning skills (and most people don’t) be sure to place these plants where they have room to mature with yearly tip pruning only.
