This family has been farming the fertile land of Washington state’s Skagit Valley for 3 centuries. When they chose to renovate a dilapidated farmhouse in their property, they called Realtor Dan Nelson, who called in a colleague, landscape architect Scott Lankford. The farmhouse turned out to be beyond repair, so that they started using a mostly blank slate. The customers, Nelson and Lankford worked together on a website plan, house and sequence of outdoor spaces. Priorities included creating a comfortable and functional home, incorporating some existing garden elements, manipulating sight lines to take full advantage of the huge views and linking the interior spaces to the outdoors.
at a Glance
Who lives here: Here is a few working farm, and a lot of their relatives, including children and grandchildren, live on adjacent properties. This residence is where they gather.
Location: Skagit Valley, Washington
Size: Around 2,600 square feet; 2 bedrooms, 2 1/2 bathroms
Year constructed: 2007
Dan Nelson, Designs Northwest Architects
The home has sweeping views of the fields in the valley and Mount Baker, part of the Cascades mountain range. Nelson, of Design Northwest Architects, and Lankford, of Lankford Associates Landscape Architects, worked together from the beginning of the job, and a huge part of the cooperation was creating sight lines to other areas of the homestead gardens as well as toward agricultural structures like windmills and grain silos from the greater landscape. This includes views from doorways and windows within the house as well as views that direct the eye during trellises and down pathways.
The new house sits about where the old farmhouse failed; the milk barn to the left was existing; the owners converted it into a playhouse for their own grandchildren. The customers attended Washington State University and picked red and gray to match their alma mater’s colors; should you look carefully, you can observe the college’s cougar mascot painted on the face of the milk barn.
Dan Nelson, Designs Northwest Architects
There are two main methods to enter the home from the road: upward the utilitarian working farm driveway and through the proper U-shaped driveway for guests. “The driveway to the left is a portion of this farm, and also the owners use it to access the garage as well as for big bits of farming equipment,” Nelson says. The plan team strategically sited the garage and driveway to keep these parked vehicles from view in the house and outdoor rooms.
Dan Nelson, Designs Northwest Architects
A huge part of the cooperation between architect and landscape architect was coordinating the indoor and outdoor spaces concerning substances and sensibility — for example, that this public-entry courtyard that guides guests inside via a formal axial plan that connects the parking court to the house. Once inside, guests enter the formal and public regions of the house.
The strict, straight lines become less formal and twist curvy as they go farther out from the house and wrap round the personal locations, like the bedroom wing to the left and also the outdoor rooms round it.
Dan Nelson, Designs Northwest Architects
“The concept for the home’s design was to make it seem like the house had evolved through time,” Nelson says. “We used different materials to state different areas of the house.” The formal public spaces (green in the ground plan) seem like they’re the first house; they are coated in cedar shingles and topped by a metal roof with a cupola.
Nelson coated the personal bedroom wing (marked in blue) and the garage (pink) in grey board and batten siding and shingled roofs to allow them to appear as though they were later developments. Lankford advanced the notion using corresponding materials and styles in the backyard.
Dan Nelson, Designs Northwest Architects
The landscape palette also overlooks the exterior facade’s elements; medium grey gravel is hemmed in by lighter rock edges. Montana ledgestone column bases relate to the rock walls from the landscape; trellises, fences and screenwork are crafted of cedar.
Dan Nelson, Designs Northwest Architects
Part of this cross axis in the entrance garden is the concrete fountain, which also ties from the house’s history. The fountain served as a bunny trough in its former life.
Lankford Associates Landscape Architects
The straight lines become curvy as they go out of the house.
Dan Nelson, Designs Northwest Architects
Dan Nelson, Designs Northwest Architects
Farther away in the house, wandering paths become much more casual, articulated with flagstone. The patio is accessible from the kitchen breakfast room, toward the left side of the picture.
Lankford Associates Landscape Architects
Lankford Associates Landscape Architects
Lankford utilized a series of paths, rock walls and trellises to control sight lines across the backyard. For instance, this trellis brings the eye to another pair of gardens and also to the milk window outside.
Continuing toward the milk barn we all see how the siting of the garage, the route and the following trellis direct the eye to the milk barn’s big doors.
Lankford Associates Landscape Architects
“The wife is a great gardener, and saving a few of the trees out of the existing homestead website was very significant to the customers,” Lankford says. One of the trees that the group planned around is that this 60-year-old cherry tree, which functioned as a centerpiece to website the house and courtyard around. “It actually anchors the house,” Nelson says. Beyond it’s the largest outdoor room, a patio off the kitchen.
Dan Nelson, Designs Northwest Architects
Dan Nelson, Designs Northwest Architects
Another huge influence on the website planning was that the valley’s powerful southwestern winds. This breezeway not just connects the main house to the garage but also lovingly protects the outdoor room.
The breezeway has an 8-foot-long sliding door that opens up the view of endless fields on calm mornings, then shuts to shield the patio once the winds kick up in the day. The glass roof structure imitates the rhythm of the house’s metal roof but retains the opinion open to the sky.
Lankford Associates Landscape Architects
The breezeway’s form forges a solid architectural connection between the house and the garage, giving the garage the look of a wing that was added on to the home over time.
Lankford Associates Landscape Architects
Lankford Associates Landscape Architects
“Family is very important to this couple, and they have a large extended family living nearby; this big outdoor room was very significant to them for family parties,” Nelson says. The patio was also put to great use during The Skagit Valley Symphony Garden Tour.
There is also a children’s play patio for the couples’ many toddlers to enjoy.
Dan Nelson, Designs Northwest Architects
Dan Nelson, Designs Northwest Architects
Just past the living room’s stone fireplace and French doors is another rock patio that captures exactly the exact same comfortable feeling outdoors as the room inside. The chimney’s Montana ledgestone relates to the rock used across the landscape.
Lankstone’s planting plan includes perennials, shrubs and trees that provide color and fragrance throughout all four seasons. He picked plants that won’t obstruct the sight lines as they mature.
Dan Nelson, Designs Northwest Architects
The upstairs attic gives access to the balcony seen in the previous picture. The attic is a play area for the kids and a decorative room for your wife.
Dan Nelson, Designs Northwest Architects
Around the personal bedroom wing, a formal gravel pathway winds through the landscape.
Dan Nelson, Designs Northwest Architects
Nelson added a cupola on peak of the house. This vernacular agricultural element lets in loads of natural lighting.
Dan Nelson, Designs Northwest Architects
“This was a subtle, organic design. The house is livable and comfortable; it is not a ‘statement house,'” Nelson says.
“This was a backyard that was really inspired by the architecture; it was a really wonderful collaboration,” Lankford says.