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Fade to Green: A Literary Editor’s Grass-Topped Home Blends Into the Background

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Landscaping

Fade to Green: A Literary Editor’s Grass-Topped Home Blends Into the Background

August 8, 2024

Recently we spotted a project on The Modern House that compelled us to stop our scroll and investigate deeper: a home that looks otherworldly and not of this time, located in Dartmoor, a region of southwest England known for its rugged landscape dotted with outcroppings and pre-historic sites. Capped with a rolling green roof and set into a hillside, the two-story residence disappears into its environment, sometimes literally.

“We wanted something that was timeless, that would still be here in a couple of hundred years. I read so many articles about houses with conservatories, swimming pools, tennis courts, games rooms and cinemas. You just don’t need all that,” its owner Gail Pirkis, a literary editor, told The Modern House. Instead, she and her husband, David, hired Peter Hall from Van der Steen and Hall Architects to design a unique but unostentatious house that “faded away around” the landscape.

The project took seven years to complete, during which time they found themselves subtracting the superfluous from their plans (“we didn’t want fancy bathrooms; we didn’t want gizmos in the kitchen”). What they ended up with is a truly low-impact home with a soft, modest footprint that’s simpatico with the natural world that surrounds it.

Here’s a peek. For the full story (and interior images), go here.

Photography by Elliot Sheppard, courtesy of The Modern House.

The couple prioritized the use of local materials. &#8\2\20;The granite that faces the building comes from the spoil heap of the quarry that was used to build nearby Castle Drogo, the last castle to be built in Britain designed by Edwin Lutyens.&#8\2\2\1;
Above: The couple prioritized the use of local materials. “The granite that faces the building comes from the spoil heap of the quarry that was used to build nearby Castle Drogo, the last castle to be built in Britain designed by Edwin Lutyens.”
Two levels of green roofs help keep the house cool in the summer months.
Above: Two levels of green roofs help keep the house cool in the summer months.
The grass on the roofs grows on a layer of topsoil that had been excavated from the site.
Above: The grass on the roofs grows on a layer of topsoil that had been excavated from the site.
Gail strolling the mown path from their house. (See Landscape on a Budget: \13 Ideas for Mown Grass Paths.)
Above: Gail strolling the mown path from their house. (See Landscape on a Budget: 13 Ideas for Mown Grass Paths.)
Gail and David had a couple thousand native trees planted since moving in, &#8\2\20;but the biggest thing we’ve done for nature has been turning the existing pond, which was silted up, into a lake. It’s brought geese, ducks, herons, an occasional cormorant and little grebe, frogs, eels and toads, as well as damselflies and dragonflies,&#8\2\2\1; she told The Modern House.
Above: Gail and David had a couple thousand native trees planted since moving in, “but the biggest thing we’ve done for nature has been turning the existing pond, which was silted up, into a lake. It’s brought geese, ducks, herons, an occasional cormorant and little grebe, frogs, eels and toads, as well as damselflies and dragonflies,” she told The Modern House.
&#8\2\20;You really feel the seasons here. At the end of spring, you have every variety of green in the trees. Then come the summer it all looks incredibly verdant. The autumn is wonderful, full of reds and oranges and browns. Then in winter the landscape looks as if it’s been scoured and scraped clean. At that time of year, you can be sitting in the house, and the trees down in the valley will be swaying in the wind, but it’s completely still up here.&#8\2\2\1;
Above: “You really feel the seasons here. At the end of spring, you have every variety of green in the trees. Then come the summer it all looks incredibly verdant. The autumn is wonderful, full of reds and oranges and browns. Then in winter the landscape looks as if it’s been scoured and scraped clean. At that time of year, you can be sitting in the house, and the trees down in the valley will be swaying in the wind, but it’s completely still up here.”

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