The Outsider: Hardscaping Anchors Fort Greene Garden With Seasonal Variety

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Starting with nothing but an old brick wall, landscape designer Paul Harness created a row-house backyard with formal structure but a lot of flexibility.

“It was really a blank slate,” said Harness, a 20-year employee of Plant Specialists, a Long Island City-based company offering design, installation, and maintenance for everything from window boxes to rooftops. “Everything is 100 percent new.”

The garden is essentially a template for seasonal variety with permanent hardscape that includes a metal dining pergola and a large bluestone patio for entertaining. Perimeter planting beds can be varied with different annuals from year to year, depending on whether the mood is for showy color or something more subtle.

The five-year-old garden “has been a bit of an evolution,” said Harness. It’s not just annuals that have been switched out. An early iteration featured espaliered fruit trees along the wood fence on one side, later exchanged for a row of slender white birch trees.

Window boxes get refreshed seasonally. “They’re usually big and showy and extravagant,” Harness said. Those shown here include dark purple cannas, bromeliads, and tall flax at the rear.

Per the clients’ preference, the garden was conceived as an outdoor great room, built to allow large groups of people to mingle, drinks in hand.

Espaliered fruit trees along the wood fence were later replaced with a row of birches, which take up less space and don’t require pruning.

The generously sized dining table is shaded by a pergola made of steel, entwined with wisteria vine that would eventually take down a wooden structure.

A climbing hydrangea scales the existing old brick wall. The lilies were “a one-year thing,” Harness said. Ferns and other low light perennials grow beneath.

One year, the hypnotic pattern of Rex begonias made a strong statement around a Buddha head sculpture beneath a Japanese maple. “That tree was a rescue from another project,” Harness said. “It was hoisted in over the back wall and has grown into a big beautiful tree, pruned to create an interesting form.” Another year, the annual plantings were more open and casual.

Another line of white birches runs along the deck rail near the house.

[Photos by Steve Friehon | Emily Gilbert]

The Insider is Brownstoner’s weekly in-depth look at a notable interior design/renovation project, by design journalist Cara Greenberg. Find it here every Thursday morning.

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