Above the Valley Floor

Sitting high on a hill above Sun Valley, where the driveway does the real work before you even reach the front door — it sweeps in a long crown-shaped loop around a knoll the house was sited to leave alone, climbing the hillside in one easy grade instead of cutting straight up it. Boulder retaining walls hold that climb in place, planted thick with Douglas fir, quaking aspen and serviceberry that blend into native hydro-seed revegetation at the edges, so the drive reads more like a trail through the hillside than a construction scar. The house itself runs low and long along the slope, stepping down nearly a full story from the main level to the lower patio, with stone columns matching the architecture framing a covered dining pavilion at one end. A wood boardwalk carries you out across the hillside to a stone fire pit terrace with long down-valley views, while the pool and its sun shelf sit on their own quiet terrace framed by boulders, tucked out of the wind. Aspen groves and terra cotta urns soften the stone patios close to the house, mountain mahogany, chokecherry and snowberry fill in around them, and penstemon, yarrow, coneflower and feather reed grass carry the color out toward the dropseed and native grasses beyond. Long-term, less than a fifth of an acre stays on permanent irrigation — everything else gets watered just long enough to take hold, then left to the hillside.