Though a refreshing, 18-by-40-foot pool adds drama to a rear-garden redesign in Great Falls, Virginia, there is more to the project worth celebrating. When owners reached out to Surrounds Landscape Architecture + Construction in 2019, their gabled residence lacked adequate entertaining space. The design team constructed a covered terrace and merged it with an expanded back porch. Adding a stone wall here, a neat path there, plus a lively planting of perennials, the one-and-a-half-plus-acre property scored greater functionality as well as glamour. 

Chad Talton, a principal landscape architect at Surrounds, quickly focused on the rear façade. “Let’s blow out this small covered porch and make it a full covered room,” he proposed. The new, metal-roofed terrace incorporates an outdoor kitchen, plus dining and sitting areas. An existing outdoor fireplace gained new stature as a focal point in the dining space. Overhead heaters extend the outdoor season. Adjacent to the terrace, a prefab spa faced in stone beckons year-round.

Surrounds put a finishing touch on enhancements by crafting a welcoming new entrance to the property from the motor court. A cedar gate opens into a stone-walled pocket garden planted with colorful perennials and boxwood. From there, a walkway of Pennsylvania bluestone charts a clear new path past box hedging and white-flowering crape myrtle trees to the bluestone terrace and pool surround. 

As Talton reflects, “We tried to create a cohesive environment that is easy to use for owners and for guests.”

Award: Grand, Outdoor Living Area, Design/Build. Landscape Architecture & Contracting: Chad Talton, PLA, Surrounds Landscape Architecture + Construction, McLean, Virginia.