Three weeks before last year’s hurricane, Key West–based landscape architect Craig Reynolds completed a new tropical garden for one of the best-known Victorian cottages in the island’s historic Old Town district.
Photography by Tamara Alvarez, courtesy of Craig Reynolds Landscape Architecture.
It was formerly owned by Nancy Friday, author of the best-selling 1973 book My Secret Garden: Women’s Sexual Fantasies, suggesting a theme for the new landscape: the secret garden.
Walls at the edge of the property are built of Miami oolite, a sedimentary rock that is “softer stone than caprock but not as soft as riprap,” says Reynolds.
From the vantage of the porch, looking back toward the front gate, “the idea is you have to come around a corner to see the house,” says Reynolds.
Brick pavers are set in a herringbone pattern on a 45-degree angle with a soldier course border. Specimen plants, including at left a gum palm (Dioon spinulosum) and in the foreground Elephant Ear (Alocasia ‘Portora’), create a dramatic tropical backdrop for the house.
The oolite wall continues alongside a brick path that winds around the the side of the house. In front of the oolite wall, a mulch of black Mexican river rock serves the dual purpose of being decorative while directing rainwater flow.
Green thatch palms provide shade, their silhouettes echoed by the understory, where the low, bushy shrub Osmoxylon lineare adds texture.
Mahogany planks on a 10-foot-deep horseshoe porch wrap around the house.
The swimming pool and surrounding brick deck are located on the side of the house.
An oolite wall and steps at the the back of the pool echo a theme.
“With stone on the coping and the coping material, which is volcanic Cantera stone from Mexico, we tried to make it look like an old lagoon that has been there forever.”
Tennessee Crab Orchard flagstone pavers lead from a brick patio through jungle-like plantings to the pool.
“The owner wanted to have private areas and little narrow paths and views and peeks, and at the same time have a landscape that was very lush with lots of shade,” says Reynolds.
A water feature was sited to enable the owner to sit on the front porch and hear the sound of running water.