The Nothing New Garden

Projects the team has designed and built together

• The North Star Garden 
• Palisades Residence 
• Alexandria Residence
• Capitol Hill Residence

How it was built

The entry stoop was built by hand from granite pulled out of three earlier lives. Brad Palmer of Oldetowne, who cut and set it:

“This little stoop has granite from so many places. We have stone off a stoop in Annapolis, off a church on Massachusetts Ave, New England. The majority of the cutting was done with hammer and chisel. I used feathers and wedges to cut the really large block.”

The terrace is reclaimed bluestone laid over a stacked wall of reclaimed granite, a mix of texture and color no single slab could give you, in pieces small enough to carry by hand into a tight city site.

Bluestone already sitting in the garden went back down as paving. Cobblestones came from a stack found on the property. The planter below the rear window was welded from steel already in the contractor’s shop, then powder-coated to match the house.

For the joints between the larger irregular stones, we drew on Japanese masonry, where the interaction between stones is closer to stitching than to paving.

Where the material comes from

Reclaimed material turns up wherever it turns up: a contractor’s stockpile, a salvage yard, a demolition that would otherwise go to landfill, or the site itself. The first garden drew mostly on Oldetowne’s yard in Frederick and on stone already lying in the garden. The next may draw on entirely different sources, and part of the design work is finding them.

Gravel, soil amendments, mulch, and conduit were new. There is no reclaimed base course. The plants were new. The deck boards were new. Finishes can be reclaimed. Infrastructure mostly cannot.

The next one

The first Nothing New Garden was a private garden in Washington, DC. The next could be a townhouse garden, a courtyard, or a whole property. The method scales.

We are looking for clients who find the constraint interesting rather than limiting. We start with a site visit and a conversation about what you want the garden to do. Design follows.

Then comes the part that makes this unlike any other project: going to see the material. A yard visit, a stockpile, whatever has turned up that season. You choose from what exists rather than from a catalog, and the design adapts to what you find.

Construction follows permitting. We work to the season and to the material, not to a fixed calendar.

• Landscape architect: Moody Graham
• Landscape contractor: Oldetowne Landscape Architects on the first garden, and others where the salvage leads
• Client: you!

Reclaimed material from our own stock is provided at no cost. Design, permitting, and construction administration are billed separately, and the contractor installs at a fixed price.

The ask

Send us a note at info@moodygraham.com with where you are, what you would like the landscape to do, anything unusual about the site, and a few recent photographs.

We look forward to collaborating with you!