Patio of the Week: Cottage Garden-Inspired Style for a Farmhouse

It took 20 years for this couple to get around to installing a patio in their backyard in Hawthorn Woods, Illinois. When they were ready, they reached out to Ginkgo Leaf Studio, a landscape design firm whose work they had admired on Houzz, to bring their backyard to life. In the process, landscape designer Jim Drzewiecki completed a master plan for their entire property. The farmhouse-like architecture of their home and the traditional yet casual style of their interiors inspired a cottage garden design that’s full of color and comfort.

Before Photo

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“After” photos by Renn Kuhnen Photography

Patio at a Glance
Who uses it: A couple — he loves to garden, and she loves to enjoy the fruits of his labor
Location: Hawthorn Woods, Illinois
Size: The patio is 750 square feet (70 square meters)
Designer: James M. Drzewiecki of Ginkgo Leaf Studio

Before: “These homeowners had lived in this house for 20 years but had never had any sort of patio installed,” Drzewiecki says. He was truly starting with a blank slate out back. The husband is fond of plants and gardening and had worked out front a lot. “I loved working with someone who was so excited about plants,” the designer says. The couple were interested in incorporating lots of color into their landscape.

Drzewiecki started the design process by sending his clients a thorough questionnaire, to find out things like how many people their outdoor dining table should seat, the number of people they invite to outdoor gatherings and whether they wanted a true fire pit or an outdoor fireplace. “These kinds of things affect dimensions,” he says. In this case, the couple had purchased a pergola they wanted to dine beneath and a fountain they wanted to hang out near. They wanted to install a portable fire pit at a later date.

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After: Drzewiecki has a background in architecture, and he often looks to the related building for answers when he begins to plan a landscape. “Often the house will provide me with centerlines, bump-outs, rooflines and windows that tell me where things should go,” he says. “And we think a lot about what the views will be like from the house. Maybe it’s because I’ve lived in Wisconsin so long — we spend a good part of the year enjoying the view from indoors rather than actually being in the space.”

Here the double doors gave him a centerline to give the patio symmetry. Straight out from the doors is the lounge area, marked by a circle of brick on the patio. His clients are considering adding a portable fire pit where the round table sits in this photo. The window to the left is above the kitchen sink and looks out upon the pergola. The large windows to the right provide views to the fountain and its surrounding garden.

New Lannon stone steps lead from the double doors to the patio, and there is a grilling station conveniently located to the right. Lannon is a town in Wisconsin near the Illinois border, in a region with quarries. Lannon stone is “basically a limestone,” Drzewiecki says.

Before Photo

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Before: Here’s a wider view of the yard before. It was fairly flat, so not much grading was involved in the project.

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After: The homeowners had ordered a pergola kit years before, but that’s as far as they had gotten in terms of their patio plans before they met Drzewiecki. He determined that they wanted a dining area underneath it and worked that into the design, placing it at one end of the patio. He planted ‘Ivory Silk’ Japanese tree lilacs (Syringa reticulata ‘Ivory Silk’) beyond the pergola, because of their June bloom time and relative indestructibility. At the other end of the patio, seen here in the foreground, is the conversation area and fountain.

Before Photo

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Before: This was the existing view a few steps out from the double doors.

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After: This is the view from the double doors now. The patio is composed of full-range bluestone, which features a mix of colors. Drzewiecki used true red clay bricks to break up the patio and delineate the three main outdoor rooms. This reinforces some cozy proportions within the large patio.

Beyond the patio, Drzewiecki added deciduous shrubs and ornamental trees to give the backdrop more character and color.

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“Bluestone and brick is a classic combination that goes with my clients’ traditional farmhouse style. And the blue color of the bluestone worked well with the yellow siding on the house — blue and yellow are almost opposite on the color wheel,” the designer says.

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Drzewiecki did not want the patio to be one long, monolithic rectangle. The circular edge of the lounge area, the half circle around the fountain seen here and other edges of the patio break things up. “These edges allowed us to create more interesting, nonlinear beds around the patio,” he says. Cottage garden style inspired the beds — lots of color, foliage and shape variations.

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The homeowners’ love of color was a big part of the cottage garden inspiration. Drzewiecki followed a few rules when laying out the plants. First, he wanted continuous blooms from May through September or October, and made sure that every bed would have plants in bloom from late spring to fall. “Also, I try to repeat each perennial throughout the garden at least three times to create a rhythm,” he says. He balances the colors using color theory and avoids repeating colors, foliage and shapes next to one another whenever possible.

These photos were taken in mid-July, when the most flowers were in full bloom. In the foreground, the plants that provide lots of color include Sunny Knock Out roses (Rosa ‘Radsunny’), ‘Red Volunteer’ daylilies (Hemerocallis ‘Red Volunteer’), ‘Caradonna’ sage (Salvia nemorosa ‘Caradonna’) and black-eyed Susans (Rudbeckia fulgida ‘Early Bird Gold’). The tree on the right is ‘Autumn Brilliance’ serviceberry (Amelanchier x grandiflora ‘Autumn Brilliance’). It provides wonderful year-round interest with its sculptural form, berries, blooms and beautiful bark.

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To add winter interest, Drzewiecki worked evergreens like ‘Green Velvet’ boxwood (Buxus ‘Green Velvet’) and grasses like tufted hairgrass (Deschampsia cespitosa ‘Bronzeschleier’) into the plant palette. “I love to use boxwoods to reinforce the geometry of a space,” he says. He also used these in his design for the front yard.

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The conversation area enjoys the sound of the fountain. The circular shapes of the fountain the homeowners chose gave him the opportunity to add the half-circle patio edge. Nodding onions (Allium tanguticum ‘Summer Beauty’) bloom between the fountain and the edge of the patio.

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The homeowners are happy that the pergola that had been sitting in boxes for a few years is finally a part of their landscape. It delineates the dining area of the patio.

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This path of steppingstones leads to the driveway and is the main path between the front yard and the back. Drzewiecki is not a fan of throwing a ton of curves around a garden just for the sake of making curves. “They should be big, bold graceful lines and show part of a circle turning into another part of a circle. They should lead the eye to follow the bed edge and to look at what’s in the bed,” he says.

He’s admits he is very particular about steppingstones as well. “Standard steppingstones are 24 inches square, but that was too small for the main path to the patio,” he says. These are custom-cut 30-inch squares of bluestone. And more particular still, he made sure the curve of the bed’s edge cut through the stone at its lower-left and upper-right corners. “These are the little things that your subconscious picks up on, letting you know it’s a good space even if you can’t put your finger on exactly why,” he says.

The plants here include ‘Limelight’ panicled hydrangea trees (Hydrangea paniculata ‘Limelight’), ‘Red Volunteer’ daylilies (Hemerocallis ‘Red Volunteer’) and ‘Jacob Cline’ beebalm (Monarda didyma ‘Jacob Cline’).

Before Photo

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Before: This shows how the driveway previously transitioned up to the backyard. Water used to run down the yard and create a pool here.

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After: New beds make good use of the runoff water and keep it from pooling in the driveway. A new set of Lannon stone steps leads to the bluestone steppingstone path. “These are outcropping stones, which have a more natural form — they are slabs of raw stone,” Drzewiecki says.

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Here’s a peek at the front of the house, which was also inspired by cottage garden style.

See all the photos of this yard

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Drzewiecki offers up some advice for making the most of hiring a landscape designer. “Even if you’re only going to install one phase of the plan now, you’ll save money and eventually have a more cohesive landscape if you have someone complete a master plan,” he says. “You’ll only be paying for the initial meetings and trip visits once. And the master plan will give you a more cohesive design than having it designed one piece at a time will.”

While the wife is happy just to have a lovely space to look at and spend time in, her husband is thrilled to have so many plants to tend to. “He told me that we changed his life,” Drzewiecki says. “That’s the best thing you can hear from a client.”