JaDo Peace Garden

A landscape, building, and circulation-improvement plan for a 4.5-acre rural property, designed to support a family's wish for a restorative home to share with their community.

The plan offered home-improvement ideas the owners could build through small investments over time, including more room for guests, better vehicle circulation, pasture management, woodland restoration, walking trails, and water catchment.

It also proposed a secluded tea house, a terraced food garden, a greenhouse, and a new earth-covered house that aligned with the owners' higher aspirations.

Design Elements

Landscape

Trees and shrubs worked together to guide and please the eye when viewed from the buildings, roadways, and paths.

Western hemlocks, with their distinctive floppy tops, formed the central theme of repose in the plant groupings.

Other native Pacific Northwest trees included red alder, western dogwood, and western crabapple.

House Renovation

The house additions and loop driveway created more room and gathering spaces for guests.

Planned improvements included skylights, a sunroom, an addition, a parterre, a circular driveway, and a greenhouse.

The kitchen garden included herbs and vegetables, dwarf fruit trees, and edible chestnut trees.

Wider hallways, skylights, larger windows, and additions worked with long axial views across the landscape to lighten the interior experience.

Tea House

The small tea house captured morning light and valley views, creating a retreat for small social gatherings.

A rock garden featured ornamental and specimen trees.

New House

The proposed two-story, organically shaped, earth-covered house spiraled upward around a glass, geodesic, half-domed atrium. The structure embraced trees and created semi-enclosed outdoor spaces.

Skylights would bring in natural light, and the roof could be reached on foot from the ground.

The design represented the owners' desire for peace and retreat.

Responsibilities

Building design, landscape design, and presentation drawings.