living — Washington, DC

The Silence Dogood Garden

"A house is not a home unless it contains food and fire for the mind as well as the body."

- Benjamin Franklin

The Silence Dogood Garden is a single-family urban residential landscape in the historic Cleveland Park neighborhood of Washington, DC. Before the renovation, the front garden was neglected and overgrown, while a monoculture of bamboo dominated the back garden. The clients approached Moody Graham to create a ‘riot of color’ in a garden packed with edible plants. Their medical background and interest in a productive landscape set the stage for a garden as a place for healing and regeneration. The design challenges traditional urban gardening conventions through the vertical layering of plants, the integration of permaculture principles, and the inclusion of habitat destinations. Inspired by the client’s childhood, a thread of limestone paving weaves through the topography and into the home to further bind the project.

Photos by Kate Wichlinski

A narrow side path at the Silence Dogood Garden, densely planted between the house and fence in autumn.

View from the dining room through open doors to the garden pavilion at the Silence Dogood Garden.

The clapboard house at the Silence Dogood Garden, its porch framed by dense front-garden planting.

Vertically layer gardens create a sense of enclosure and immersion while attracting diverse wildlife. They offer seasonal changes in color and texture creating unexpected "reveals". Beyond aesthetics, they provide ecological richness by fostering biodiversity through thoughtful plant selection, varied layouts, and the inclusion of built habitats.

The Silence Dogwood Garden is designed to maximize layered biodiversity. Approximately 70% of the plant palette is native species, which are cut back in spring to support their natural overwintering habitats. A bat box and an owl box were added in the back woodland to further enhance the ecosystem, creating a welcoming space for beneficial predators.

Planting plan for the Silence Dogood Garden, showing edible and ornamental zones across the property.

The garden integrates edible landscaping into garden design through permaculture principles. Apples, paw paws, pomegranates, and figs structure the landscape and will grow into a mirco food forest. Berry shrubs and herbaceous edibles are folded into a pollinator garden.

Section drawing through the Silence Dogood Garden, showing planting layers from street to rear garden.

The house is sited on a slope that descends swiftly into a woodland, setting the canopy layer at eye level from the terrace or the house. New tree, green roof, shrub, grass, perennial, vine, and ground cover plants create vertically layered gardens that provide enclosure and immersion while attracting diverse wildlife.