Majesty and repose reign in a large, lush Alabama garden that draws upon abiding Southern favorites.
From the street, it is a handsome, well-kept brick home in a very nice Birmingham neighborhood. But once you enter the garden through an unpretentious white wooden gate, you feel like Alice exploring her ever-changing looking-glass world. Surprise after surprise takes your breath away as John Golightly Wilson, founder of Golightly Landscape Architecture, has crafted a wonderfully cohesive space of elegant outdoor rooms that reveal themselves slowly, in a most dignified manner.
“We tried to make garden rooms and to pull the architecture from the house out into the garden,” says John, who has worked with the homeowners since they refined the backyard design during a major home renovation in 2008. The couple also wanted a pool in the huge, deeply sloped lot, but John says the proposed location was too close to the house and cut off the flow. After some discussion, he placed it at the furthest reach of the property, about 100 feet from the house. The pool’s location, while perfect for creating a picturesque scene viewed from the home above, presented a new challenge for John. “We needed to get down there without a ramp, and we needed to make it elegant.” To make the transition from the dwelling to the pool, John used stacked moss rock walls and one of the landscape architect’s most important tools in working with a difficult grade: stairs.
He used several types of stairs to allow seamless movement through the grounds. Along the way, boxwoods, mondo grass, and strips of lawn create lush green areas, setting a soft, tranquil tone that plays against mid-height evergreen hedges and the towering magnificence of century-old trees.
Immediately upon entering the yard, a half-dozen moss-tinged brick steps take you up to the residence’s delightful veranda. This perch gives an overview of ancient Southern pines and oaks that soar toward the sky, creating a cathedral-like quiet grandeur.
At the veranda’s base sits a small fountain garden trimmed with a rectangular boxwood hedge, a vignette that encourages you to pause and enjoy the trickling water and seasonal flowers before moving on. Around the corner, a second parterre extends to a short set of stairs that leads down to a bench on a landing. Here, visitors are enticed to sit a moment and savor the colorful beds on the perimeter. About midway through the expansive property, an enchanting staircase with alternating risers of Pennsylvania bluestone slabs and mossy lawn is flanked by an allée of ‘Winter King’ hawthorns, reminiscent of a church aisle decorated for a grand wedding. The feature not only preserves the quietude, but it also creates an appealing centerline view from the abode’s family room above. A dry-stack moss rock wall (currently lined with ‘Nellie R. Stevens’ hollies) with stairs transitions to the secluded pool area.
The large aqua pool with wide coping and a grass deck is enhanced by a captivating pavilion, designed by renovation architect James Carter of Birmingham and furnished with comfortable chairs for poolside relaxation. Flowering plants of the South like hydrangeas, dogwoods, quince, and more unfurl their full color in summer to provide the perfect accent at the entrance to the covered area.
Text by Marie Baxley Photography by Stephanie Welbourne Steele Styling by Mary Beth Jones
