Stringing a series of immersive garden rooms and ways across the site, we brought forward the elemental nature of this glacial landscape.

Esker Weave

New Hampshire

Esker Weave is a cinematic garden of journeys and gatherings. The narrow site spans an esker, a massive deposit of glacial sediment. The site's topography limited most construction to a small plateau, where terraced garden rooms and thick bands of planting quiet the suburban surroundings and center the elements of sky, slope, water and trees. We connected the plateau to the bottom of the steep slopes with two sculptural staircases, giving the residents access to public trails, water recreation, and the town community.

Recreation on the water has long been valued in the area of the site

The arrival to the plateau

The landscape design brings focus to the gardens, abstracting the architecture as the edges of garden rooms. The gardens afford immersion in the colors, sounds, scents and textures of the seasons. Regional and elemental materials such as granite paving, local schist walls, and hammered bronze handrails ground these connections to the natural world. Two monumental staircases ascend and descend the slopes, transecting the esker with a unifying grain.

We paid close attention to the textures offered by stone, wood, and leaves, and the architectural qualities of the trees

Site Plan The esker moves north-south between the bodies of water. Deep collaboration with the architect resulted in an intertwined and distributed building program, with minimal massing visible from the street to maintain the neighborhood scale.

The walks, walls, and plantings work together to create immersive moments in the landscape and separate the garden rooms from each other.

Local mica-schist stone was used for the site walls

The bosque on a quiet winter night

At the top of the east embankment, a garden room overlooks the slope and adjacent pond. The water trough adds sound and atmosphere.

Beginning at the street, we designed a gently curving stairway punctuated by garden landings that greets visitors with a relaxed and immersive threshold into the site. Native plants blanket the slope, a glimpse of the site’s diverse woodland glade palette that replaced extensive lawn. At the top of the steps, a stacked stone wall screens the plateau, completing the soft departure from the public view of the street and slope.

Looking down the eastern stairs to the street and pond

We slipped narrow granite walks along the embankment at each stair landing, offering opportunities to pause and explore.

As one of the few landscape elements that is frequently touched, we paid close attention to the texture of the handrail, which emanates warmth and a welcoming attitude.

Concept sketch for the handrail construction

The shrub plantings along the eastern stairs offer a break from the dense woodland slopes of the adjacent properties, creating a portal into the site.

The eastern staircase during construction.

Hand-hammered bronze handrail sample.

At the central plateau of the site, we wove bands of precise granite walks, rough schist walls, and dense lines of birch and aspen to create a variety of garden rooms in the pockets of space in between. Despite the small size of the plateau, these rooms feel separate and distinct from each other, sized to be equally comfortable for solitary moments or entertaining groups. Beside the house, a bosque of 12 honeylocust trees balances the mass of the buildings and extends the dining area for outdoor entertaining. Further on, the central walk slips between building and site walls to descend to the pool. The wood coping and deck are bounded by stone walls that step down to the western slope, leaving the view towards the river uninterrupted.

We worked with the planting and grading strategy to create enhanced privacy for the pool terrace. The pool overlooks the western wooded slope, offering afternoon shade and a gentle cooling updraft from the river below.

An early concept sketch for the site plan established our methodology of weaving, creating a strong grain and cross-grain to subdivide the site.

A steel bar fence creates a porous threshold into the pool area

We used detailing more typical of an urban setting at the bosque. Structural soil supports the stonedust paving and prevents compaction. Aeration piping and drip irrigation run above the soil profile.

Prizing darkness, the site is minimally lit. Glass globe lamps are hung above the dining table and sitting area within the bosque.

The water table adds sound and glittering light to the bosque, and becomes an abstract plane displaying ice and leaves in the colder seasons

Water clings to the edge of the carved granite water trough

A runnel next to the spine path expresses the dynamism of water, collecting rain during storm events

The bird bath adds atmosphere to the east embankment

To access the river, we designed a unique staircase that descends over 100' of slope. Requiring a special permitting process, the stairway gently curves to navigates a woodland where no tree removal was allowed, and each square inch of disturbance was accounted for and minimized. We led a team of structural and geotechnical engineers, surveyors, and custom fabricators to design and install this sculptural stairway. A low-impact helical pile system was installed with handheld drills. Prefabricated stair sections connect to the piles, floating above the forest floor and enabling access to the dock and public trail.