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"I wanted to create landscaped areas much like I would inside a home." -Sue Peterson, homeowner and landscape designer
The gorgeous landscape wrapped around Sue and Dave Peterson’s corner lot in Maple Grove illustrates what can happen when a dabbling develops into a passion. After Sue’s mother passed away in 2001 she, along with her father, grew an interest in gardening. It was a way to cope with grief. But they soon discovered a love for plants. They visited nurseries, read books and shared plants with each other. Sue’s love for gardening grew into a landscape that became a stop on the Maple Grove Days Garden Tour.
The Petersons built their home in the Autumn Woods neighborhood in 1996. Sue, with a degree in architecture and Dave as vice president of M/A/Peterson Design Build, created their dream house. Sue designed their home and Dave was in charge of construction. And when Sue decided to tackle her first landscape project, she realized the similarities between landscape design and architectural design.
“The overall art of design is understanding the use of space,” Sue says. “I wanted to create landscaped areas much like I would inside a home, a combination of intimate spaces and spaces to accommodate larger gatherings.”
It was with an eye for creating a sense of outdoor rooms that Sue decided to overhaul her front yard landscaping in 2005. There had been a patio between the driveway and the front concrete stoop. The Petersons like the front yard patio for hosting neighborhood bonfires and keeping an eye on the children. But the patio was settling into a hole, so Sue redesigned it, added steppers for a walkway and replaced the concrete stoop at their front entrance with a porch made of tumbled stone pavers.
Tall arborvitaes create a bit of privacy for the front yard patio and large boulders intermixed with masses of ornamental grasses and perennial flowers serve as a retaining wall along the front edge of the yard. The steps to the front porch are a hardscape mix of pavers, large flagstones and more of those perfectly placed boulders. Among the front yard plantings are an autumn blaze maple tree, a spring snow crab tree and a beautiful Merrill magnolia that many Minnesota gardeners would be jealous of. “The trick to growing a magnolia in Minnesota is to be patient,” says Sue.
Multiple dry creek beds of assorted rocks handle any drainage issues and blossoming clumps of purple balloon flowers and lilies springing from hardwood stained mulch add to the whimsical beauty of the design.
Another flagstone path dotted with acorns leads visitors around the opposite side of the house through what Sue calls the birdbath garden. Shade plantings like hostas and astilbes border this charming path under the canopy of a large oak tree.
Once you reach the east-facing backyard, the entire landscape opens up into a large sunny space fit for entertaining family or hosting large parties. Sue decided to tackle the backyard design in 2009 by adding a maintenance free, poured concrete, upper level deck with a wrought iron railing, a lower-level flagstone patio, and several planting beds. “Jeff Gaffney with Tabor Group Landscape helped with all the hardscape installation and the hardscape materials came from Hedberg Aggregates,” Sue says. Working with rocks, pavers and large stone is difficult for most homeowners to do themselves.
Guests can relax in Adirondack chairs around a fire pit on the lower level patio. Or meander up the stone steps that lead away from the patio and curve along a rock covered hillside where flowering sedum spills from every crack and crevice. Shrubbery, waves of ornamental grasses and interspersed flowerbeds provide an eyeful of seasonal beauty everywhere you look. But it’s the pond just past the emerald green lawn that beckons visitors to come alongside.
“I always wanted to do something special near the pond,” Sue says. “And with the garden tour approaching last summer, I decided it was time.”
A full-grown willow tree serves as a scenic, shady backdrop to a cozy patio made with flagstones set into polymeric sand situated next to the pond. Two chairs provide a perfect little seating area to sit and read a book or simply gaze out at the water or enjoy the sea of blooming yellow sedum and daylilies planted into a pond-side rock retaining wall.
“That project was finished just in time for the garden tour,” Sue says with a relieved smile. More than 1,000 people toured the Peterson’s yard last summer and Sue isn’t done yet. “I always have a project in mind,” she says. “Or something in the yard needs attention.” For her next endeavor, a play structure that her children have outgrown will probably be replaced with a gazebo or some sort of screened porch. The wheels in Sue’s designer mind are always turning.
Sue’s gardening method is to move any stressed plants to more desirable locations rather than use fertilizer. She chooses hardy plants and uses black dirt and never tries to force something into her yard that isn’t a natural fit. The goal is to coordinate lots of texture and color and as conditions change, decide what to move and what to eliminate. It is a labor of love. “I love the creativity of landscape design,” says Sue. She must, because she received a degree in landscape design from Ashworth College in 2011 and is now beginning to build her own business doing landscape design for other homeowners. “Now that I’m done with my own yard, I’m eager to tackle other projects,” she says. //
Garden Guide:
hedbergaggregates.com
taborlandscape.com
Sue Peterson, landscape designer, 612.799.0743
& Don’t Miss the 2014 Maple Grove Days Garden Tour on July 13. mgco.org
