Fade to Native

Perched above the White Clouds golf course in Sun Valley, this contemporary mountain home called for a landscape that felt like it had always been there. Rather than impose a manicured yard on the hillside, we treated the site as an extension of the surrounding vegetation – more refined moments near the house that slowly dissolve into native revegetation at the edges.

Arrival is a simple sequence – a concrete auto court leads to a front entry framed by native boulders and layered plantings, softening the move from car to front door. Cut-stone pavers and board-formed concrete walls carry the architecture’s materials out into the landscape, and they’ll weather right alongside the house. Down on the lower level, a copper spa tucks in between two board-formed walls – an intimate little retreat with big down-valley views, softened by native grasses that tie it back to the hillside. Aspen, Amur maple, spruce, bristlecone pine and Doug fir give the site structure through the long high-desert winters, while redtwig dogwood, ‘Limelight’ hydrangea and spirea bring color and texture closer to the house. The boulders were hand-picked and placed to look like they’ve been sitting there all along. Instead of big expanses of lawn, you arrive through native grasses and stone – give it a few seasons and it will be hard to tell where the garden ends and the hillside begins.