It’s not every day that a client asks a landscape designer to come and see a barge they’re thinking about buying, but that was exactly the team’s phone call. Hollander Design Landscape Architects I received it a few years ago. The facility in question was a home that was built in the 1950s on a torpedo barge and has since been docked at Hampton’s port. The bulkhead needed a complete reconstruction. And then the scenery will need to be restored. Hollander Design took on the challenge.
The client eventually ended up buying a home, and after Marine Corps construction contractors rebuild the bulkheads, walks and docks, Hollander Design is back to make a massive relief effort. The client wanted to retreat from his busy work life, so he was looking for a low-maintenance landscape. They wanted beautiful scenery, but they didn’t want a breathtaking environment and a garden that competed with. The trick is to create the illusion that barges and bulkheads have been weaved into the surrounding swamps.
“Everything around the house is very wet and swampy, but their property just happens to be on that bulkhead, so it just happens to be dry,” explains Landscape Designer Melissa Reavis, director of Hollander Design’s residential studio. “So we chose the right plant for the area, but it’s completely different from the most recent area where it sits.” Consider beach grass instead of nearby rush, plus beach plums and Northern Bayberry in the nearby dunes.
In addition to its own barge setting, this property experiences intense deer pressure (challenges that many gardeners have involved). Furthermore, the site is exposed to sea salt, and rainwater is increasingly surged. “We left a fairly limited palette behind,” says Reavis, but she created a garden that was almost as magical as its setting, focusing on what she calls “bulletproof plants for the coastal environment.” Here, her formula to get it right.
Photography by photo Courtesy of Neil Landino and Hollander Design Landscape Architects.
The soil comes first.
After the rebuild of Bulkhead, Hollander Design had to replace many of the soils Reavis described as being backed by something that was back in the 1950s. The new soil is mostly clean sand, so no nutrients leach into the water. “All things repotted in that area are planted almost directly in the sand, and do not affect the surrounding water quality, so that they do not add any additional nutrient loads to the soil,” explains Reavis.
Designed to minimize maintenance.
To satisfy the owner’s desire for a low-maintenance landscape, Reavis avoided grass lawns and instead planted native, climate-adjusted perennials. The Hollander Design maintenance team will make a fierce cut in May to prevent plant growth. This also produces long flowers, but otherwise it is minimal maintenance and has no pesticides, herbicides or fertilizers.
Imitation of nearby aesthetics.
“I feel completely wrapped in the port here,” says Reavis. “The job of the landscape here is to make this magical world feel as woven as possible.” To complement the landscape, Reavis has drawn in plants that are suitable for not only native plants, but climates that make them feel like they are in the same world as the natural landscape. “They are all flowing grass and flowing perennials, so none of them feel out of place in their more native natural habitat,” says Reavis.
Mint for victory.
