Feature Friday: An approachable approach to a casual landscape

For this week's Feature Friday I wanted a more "normal" garden. That is, something approachable for the average gardener. The last couple weeks I've featured gardens that approach the dream category, but this one feels very real to me (even if the house suggests they probably hire a gardener to maintain it).

I like that relatively ordinary plants have been used throughout. I'm a bit of a plant collector and always like to have the newest cultivar, but there is something simple about the plant selection here that I find soothing.

My favorite part is the dry creek bed they've created in the middle of the driveway. I've seen a lot of driveways that have what amounts to a drainage ditch in the middle and none of them are particularly attractive, but this is a very creative and attractive solution to a relatively common problem.

Woodburn & Company Landscape Design

Woodburn & Company Landscape Design

The landscape design firm is Woodburn and Company. They are located in New Hampshire, and this is what they had to say about this project on their website:

This property in Camden, Maine is an open woodland sloping to the water. The landscaping was designed to retain a natural feeling in keeping with the site and locale. A “dry stream bed” was included inside the front drop-off loop that allows for natural drainage and creates an informal and interesting foreground for the house. Every opportunity was used to create scale and charm throughout the landscape with enframed views and interesting landscape details.

The picky editor in me (the one who is not responsible for any typos you find on this blog) would like to point out that enframed is not a word, but I'm going to give them a pass because I'd rather have a landscape designer who knows how to make a yard look pretty than one who knows that enframed is not a word.

What do you think about this landscape?