Jardin Vert by Janice Parker Landscape Architects: 2020 Best of Year Winner for Residential Landscape

Janice Parker calls it “jardin vert,” or green garden. But this property in Greenwich, Connecticut, which includes a 1920s house on
6 acres and a new equestrian facility by Jones Byrne Margeotes Partners on the adjacent 10, is anything but monochromatic. The green tones run the gamut: Not only are there gradations in leaf hue but also the tree bark ranges from the gray of beeches to the dark brown of sugar maples.

Still, the controlled palette is part of a highly disciplined approach the landscape architect adopted for the estate, taking cues from age-old agrarian uses of the land. Separate driveways to the house and stables are bordered by trees, just as they would have been a century ago, when farmers lined up maples to facilitate harvesting their sap for syrup. Boxwood hedges are clipped into unfussy forms.

Many of the existing features were preserved, from reclaimed fieldstone that became the barn facade to mature oaks and old stone walls that help provide a sense of enclosure in the vast
expanses. “The landscape should hold you,” Parker says, “just like rooms do.”

Project Team: Janice Parker; Ann Schmitt; Douglas N. Clark; Cormac Byrne.

> See the full list of winners and honorees from Best of Year 2020