Design snapshot:Esprit d'espalier

Training trees to grow in one plane, as an espalier, appeals to me. I am likewise enamored of topiaries. I was married in a topiary garden, and I periodically bring home a miniature, potted myrtle or rosemary topiary that I simply can’t resist. The art of shaping natural material to achieve a desired form is, in many ways, akin to architecture. This espaliered dwarf pear tree beautifully enhances the pale, blue-green backdrop of what I assume is an infilled, barn-door opening. It’s but one of many captivating garden features that I discovered at a Gloucester property last weekend during the North Shore Open Day, a program organized by The Garden Conservancy. Visit their website to find the Open Days Program schedule in your neck of the woods. I was glad I did.

by Katie Hutchison for the House Enthusiast

Design snapshot: Pleasing pavers and plantings

Click on the photo to see it in the note cards/prints gallery.Weaving a variety of materials, textures, and colors together, this patio pattern is a delight. The regular geometry of the flat bricks beautifully contrasts the rounded, irregular stones that infill in between. The layout cleverly combines bricks that are side-by-side, in rows of running-bond, and strips of herringbone. The soft burst of green in the mounded planting accents the masonry composition with life. The green works well with the complementary red of the brick, and both benefit from the contrasting cool, blue-grey puddles of river rock. With a little imagination, simple materials can be arranged to create a dynamic hardscape carpet underfoot.

by Katie Hutchison for the House Enthusiast

Design snapshot: A woodshed to remember

To immortalize a woodshed in this way both amused and heartened me. Of course, this isn’t marking any, old woodshed; this recognizes Henry David Thoreau’s woodshed, behind his cabin near Walden Pond in Concord, Mass.

The elegant, engraved, flush stone denotes a site vital to Thoreau’s solitary cabin life in the mid-eighteen-hundreds. It was here that he stored the wood, vital to stoking the cabin fire that warmed him while he wrote. Without the woodshed, perhaps he never would have had the cabin experience that led him to write Walden: Or, Life in the Woods.

I imagine that the notion of acknowledging and celebrating something as fundamental and essential as the woodshed would have pleased Thoreau, as would the stone marker itself. Simple and rugged, surrounded by a soft bed of leaves, it seems a fitting echo of Thoreau’s hardy life amidst the natural world.

It is, after all, the luxury of life’s essentials, like wood for a warm shelter, which makes our intellectual lives possible.

by Katie Hutchison for the House Enthusiast

Design snapshot: Shaker stone barn ruin

I wrote about the 1846 Shaker South Family Dwelling, shown in the background, a few years ago for Yankee magazine. I paid the homeowners in Harvard, Mass. a recent visit and marveled anew at the stone barn ruin on the property.

I learned that it’s comprised of two wythes of stone. (Wythes are vertical sections of a masonry wall that are one unit thick.) The exterior stones have more regular shapes and are tightly coursed; the interior stones have less regular shapes and are more loosely coursed. The two layers are connected by select through stones that join one wythe to the other. Over time, the roof collapsed, and water infiltrated between the two wythes, subjecting them to the forces of expansion and contraction. Today, all that’s left are the lower portions of the walls, complete with enormous lintels, and some perilously tall corner remnants.

The owners have been collaborating with the Harvard Conservation Trust in hopes of raising funds to stabilize the structure to prevent it from deteriorating further. If you can help preserve this landmark, contact the Trust.

by Katie Hutchison for the House Enthusiast

Design snapshot: Classic carriage-house doors

Perhaps these old doors once provided access to horse-drawn carriages. Nowadays they’re inactive. Time has taken a toll. A row of raised panels has been replaced with flat-panel substitutes. The astragal trim, which would have covered the vertical intersection between the joining door leaves, is missing. The hinges appear unhinged. Nonetheless, they’re handsome doors.

Natural light enters the narrow, glass panes that are in careful proportion with the wood panels. View of the interior is purposefully limited since this would originally have been a storage space. The hefty, field stone, exterior wall with deeply raked joints and arched top greatly contributes to the appeal. The warm toned stone nearly complements the forest green doors, in much the same way that cedar shingles would often offset dark green trim when the Shingle style had its heyday.

There’s plenty here to inspire the design of oversized doors today -- for a garage, carriage house, or creative outbuilding. Attention to detail never goes out of favor.

by Katie Hutchison for the House Enthusiast