LOCATION: Kittery, ME

A property tucked into the woods deserves a landscape that feels like it grew there. For this full-scale landscape design build in Kittery, ME, our team was brought in to transform a wooded, sloped lot surrounding a timber-frame home into a landscape as considered as the architecture itself. Tiered natural stone retaining walls now step gracefully down the hillside, tying the home into its site while solving the grading challenges that come with building on the Seacoast's rolling terrain. Native granite slab steps and flagging walkway guide movement between the home's entrances, the wooded backdrop, and the open lawn beyond, while a river-rock drainage bed handles runoff with the same craftsmanship as every visible surface.

Plantings throughout the property were selected with an eye for texture, structure, and staying power: a palette that’s largely native — ornamental grasses, perennials, and shrubs — mixed with a few favorites like hydrangeas and astilbe, along with columnar evergreens that frame the walkways and soften the transition from mulched beds to lawn, while mature pines and hardwoods were preserved to keep the property feeling settled rather than newly built.

A stone-set fire pit patio anchors the rear yard as a gathering space, and expansive lawn panels give the family room to spread out. The result is a landscape that balances low-maintenance, deer resistant plant selections with the kind of hardscaping and craftsmanship that holds up to a Maine winter, proof that thoughtful landscape design and skilled construction, working together, can make a wooded property feel entirely transformed.