Article and pictures by Angie Verge
Angie Verge Landscape Architecture & Design is a boutique design firm specializing in ecological and sustainable landscapes. Our specialty is working with residential clients to design, develop, and enhance their outdoor living areas, often when conservation and wetland permitting is required. Our expertise lies in the design and installation of formal and managed landscapes that integrate native plants and locally sourced materials that serve both form and function. This includes providing habitat value to a backyard area or assisting in stormwater management solutions, like rain gardens and vegetative swales. The aim is to create landscapes that provide enhanced outdoor enjoyment for clients while resulting in net benefits for wetlands, rivers, and streams.
Additionally, the firm is involved in the development of multi-family residential sites in urban and suburban cities, preparing Landscape Plans for submission to municipal land use boards. These projects enable us to introduce native trees and shrubs to densely developed areas, increasing neighborhood biodiversity and tree equity in locations that lack adequate green space.
Designing with native plants presents challenges, including difficulty sourcing plants commercially, despite increased consumer interest. Managing mature sizes of shrubs, perennials, and grasses without using cultivars, which local regulatory boards often require, is another challenge, alongside pressure from browsing wildlife such as rabbits, groundhogs, and deer. It requires creativity and trial and error to develop plant palettes that thrive and perform in formal and built landscapes.
Our firm’s process often begins with clients seeking typical yard features like walkways, decks, pools, and outdoor kitchens. Many clients are unaware of nearby wetlands or resource areas that may affect development plans. The firm educates and guides clients through the necessary permitting, communication, installation, and compliance processes in these sensitive areas.
Recently, we collaborated with a client and builder on remodeling a historic farmhouse in Carlisle, MA, aiming to connect and improve the use and flow to the new outbuildings using stone walkways, retaining walls, and additional plantings to complement the existing cottage gardens. The project included a new driveway layout, parking areas, and paver terraces for dining and relaxation. Upon reviewing the site survey, it was discovered that a nearby wetland projected a 100’ buffer zone into the area to be developed, unknown to the homeowners. This necessitated a permit application to the town, including a landscape plan outlining project construction and resource area protection. The team designed a landscape focused on features and construction methods that would benefit the resource area for years to come.
Materials and joint construction were selected to be permeable, reducing additional stormwater runoff. A grading plan was provided to reduce steep slopes, slow runoff, and allow it to soak into the ground before reaching the wetland. The design reduced turf grass treated with synthetic fertilizers and herbicides, replacing it with more planting beds of native plants, promoting healthier soil conditions, habitat, pollinator value, and overall site biodiversity. The existing gardens remained, consisting of mostly introduced plants, so we added in a significant number of native plants and grasses to fill in the gaps.
The landscape plan was thoughtful, sustainable, and ecologically minded, considering each element’s impact on the resource area and devising solutions using design best practices. Permitting boards approved the plan enthusiastically, with minimal feedback or revisions, given the design’s alignment with board intentions to protect and enhance the wetland.
Upon completion, the clients were pleased with the beautiful and functional landscape that we built using native fieldstone, granite, bluestone and Boston bricks. Our project successfully balanced aesthetics and environmental protection.
The existing gardens were weeded, organized and edited. The empty pockets were filled with native plants from a local grower.
Native plants were added to the existing cottage garden, such as Fringe Tree (Chionanthus virginicus), Low Scape Mound Chokeberry (Aronia melanocarpa ‘Low Scape Mound’), Flowering Potentilla (Dasiphora fruticosa ‘Goldfinger’) and foamflower (Tiarella cordifolia).
The entrance to the cottage garden off the driveway was enhanced with masses of perennials & grasses: switchgrass (Panicum virgatum ‘Shenandoah’), Goldsturm rudbeckia (Rudbeckia fulgida ‘Goldsturm’), Low Scape Mound chokeberry (Aronia melanocarpa ‘Low Scape Mound’), and foamflower (Tiarella cordifolia).
We maintained a lawn strip along the driveway edge to handle winter snow load, and to also provide visual delineation between the manicured landscape and the more natural gardens. Native plants added in are beards tongue (Penstemon digitalis ‘Dark Towers’), switchgrass (Panicum virgatum ‘Northwind’), coneflower (Echinacea purpurea ‘Pow Wow Berry’) and yarrow (Achillea millefolium ‘Moonbeam’)
Angie Verge is a MA Professional Landscape Architect, a MA Certified Horticulturist and holds a certification in the Fundamentals of the MA Wetland Protection Act. She is a former Conservation Commissioner in Carlisle, MA.