This private residence is in an exclusive gated community built around beautiful Converse Lake. The neighborhood located 30 miles from NYC straddles the borderline between North Castle in Westchester County, New York, and Greenwich, Connecticut. As the designer and project manager, I was challenged by the existing site constraints.

The property had lake frontage and two wetlands and was in a highly environmentally regulated and enforced area. Half of the dry buildable area on the site lay on the ledgestone outcrop to make complex matters even mo. The excavation contractor drilled and blasted stone for weeks to accommodate the homeowner’s indoor basketball court and swimming pool on the basement level. The blasted rock was used to construct the natural stone retaining walls and as accents on site.

The landscape design was meant to flow with the existing topography as much as possible, which is why the rear yard is terraced to minimize excavation and blasting. Most of the plant material specified provides food or wildlife habitat to offset some of the disturbance to the site. All stormwater runoff from development is run through oil and sediment separators and bio-filtration gardens, then retained in large underground infiltration chambers.

This project was designed while the Project Manager for Jay Fain and Associates, Fairfield, Connecticut.