Ridge, Reflected

This Wood River Valley home sits right on its own pond, with a long view across the water to the ridge beyond – the kind of site where the garden’s job is mostly to get out of the way and let that view do the work. Close to the house, the garden stays refined – a terrace and pergola off the back door, a run of Madison limestone paving, and a pair of stone-edged water troughs fed by a run of spillways that carry sound, and reflected light, out toward the water. Autumn Blaze and Hot Wings maples give the near garden its fall color, with Siberian peashrub filling out the shrub layer along the walks. Past the formal lawn – kept to under 2,300 square feet – almost 12,000 square feet of disturbed ground went back to native grass revegetation, stitching the site back into the sagebrush hillside it sits on. Existing boulders and a stand of aspen along the pond’s edge were left in place rather than redesigned, landscape walls and a run of plank steps carry you down to the water, and a reworked masonry wall ties the new work back into the home’s existing garden.