Kimberly Mercurio Landscape Architecture Receives 2019 APLD Award

KMLA Is The Recipient Of A 2019 APLD Landscape Design Award

We are always thrilled and honored when our firm is recognized by our industry for providing excellence in landscape design, and are pleased to announce that we've recently been awarded a Silver Award for residential design by the Association of Professional Landscape Designers

Residential Design Category: Garden For Stones, Cambridge, Massachusetts

We were recognized for a project redesigned for the owner of a 20th-century urban home in Cambridge, Massachusetts. As a result of the construction, the site was left denuded, and needed a new landscape design.

The project included an existing Sears Roebuck kit garage with an attached rustic pergola that the homeowners were extremely fond of and wanted to maintain. 

The client was inspired by gardens in Japan and Iceland and wanted a minimal design aesthetic. The goal was to provide the homeowner with a visual respite as she gazes upon the garden while meditating in her new room addition, as well as spaces to sit while having her morning coffee. 

For the final design we incorporated materials appropriate for New England while maintaining the minimal design aesthetic. Materials were locally sourced, and the sitting stones were selected from a nearby farmer's field.

We created a bluestone walkway using planted thyme at the joints, a hardscape gravel terrace gathering space, and a mortise and tenon fence and gates at the entry garden.

Because this was to be a meditative garden, we chose plantings that would provide year-round interest. We included clipped yew hedges to provide order and a backdrop for the other plantings in the backyard garden that bloom throughout the year. The gardens included extensive native and drought resistant flowering plants and ground covers.

The garden gracefully moves around the existing garage structure and provides beauty and elegance to the awkward, yet interesting, structure. The client can gaze upon the garden while practicing her morning meditation. 

The mortise and tenon red cedar fencing provides the perfect enclosure for the client's dogs and fits into the landscape design perfectly.

The APLD International Landscape Design Awards 

The APLD International Landscape Design Awards Program honors excellence in landscape design. Projects in eight different categories are judged on the basis of difficulty, craftsmanship, attention to detail and execution.

According to the judging committee:

“This is a small but mighty plan. It is easy to overdo a small plan but I think you got it just right. Very nice details, the bluestone edge, the steel edge, and the paving materials work well together. The garage is a great place to capture rainwater into a rain barrel or cistern.

A calm and soft garden. Good scale of spaces and great design repetition of the forms. The structure of the stone and steppers is a perfect contrast with the plantings. A three-dimensional work of art, space and places.”

We are honored to receive this award and would like to thank the judging panels, Sheila Brady, Karen Chapman, Bruce Crawford, Mark Dwyer, Becky Heath, Carolle Huber, Whitney Griffin, Vanessa Gardner Nagel, FAPLD, NCIDQ, and Greg Pierceall, for all of their time spent judging this year’s competition.

We're proud to have been named for a Silver Award for our design and we're looking forward to being recognized at the 2019 APLD International Design Conference in Seattle, Washington, being held July 25 – 29, 2019.