Modern, Traditional, or Both — Finding the Right Style

Two pages into every design we sketch, we're really just answering one question: what does the house want? Style, in landscape design, is downstream of architecture. Get that ordering wrong and the result will feel off no matter how good the planting list is.

Traditional homes — colonial, Cape Cod, Southern brick, Williamsburg — tend to ask for symmetry, layered planting, and material that softens with age. The classic moves work because the architecture itself is symmetrical: a centered entry, balanced windows, a hipped or gabled roof that the eye reads as composed. We design for those homes with paired anchor plantings at the corners, a centered entry walk, layered beds (tall, mid, low), and material that patinas — brick that mellows, stone that lichens, copper lanterns that turn green.

Modern homes — clean lines, larger glass, low rooflines, contemporary stucco or board-and-batten — tend to ask for restraint, geometry, and material that holds its edge. The same paired-anchor planting that flatters a colonial would smother a modern facade. We design those properties with massed single-species planting (forty hostas, not a mixed bed), straight-edge bed lines, large-format paver or honed-stone hardscape, and lighting that reveals planes rather than objects.

Most projects are some honest mix. The architecture is rarely pure — most of our region's homes are traditional Southern brick with a 1990s rear addition, or a 1970s ranch with a contemporary front renovation, or a builder colonial that's been added onto twice. The people living in those houses almost never want a museum-piece period landscape; they want a place that feels like the family's, not the architecture's archive.

Our approach in those mixed cases is to read the front and the back separately. The front of the home is what the street and the appraiser see — it should hold the architecture's discipline. The back of the home is private, lived in by the family, and should serve the way they actually use the space. A traditional brick colonial with a strict symmetric front planting and a relaxed, asymmetric, hosting-oriented rear yard is the right composition for a lot of our clients.

Material is the strongest style signal. Brick reads traditional. Honed bluestone reads transitional. Large-format porcelain pavers read modern. Random-coursed fieldstone reads rustic. We pick the material first, then the planting palette that flatters it. A modern bluestone patio with cottage-garden planting reads confused; the same patio with massed grasses and a single specimen tree reads composed.

Planting palette matters as much as material. Traditional Eastern NC palette: azalea, camellia, dogwood, holly, crepe myrtle, boxwood, hydrangea. Transitional: muhly grass, evergreen Japanese maple, dwarf yaupon, abelia, salvia. Modern: massed liriope, cast-iron plant, ginkgo, soft-leaf yucca, single-specimen ornamental grass. The same plant in the same garden bed reads differently depending on whether it's in mass or mixed.

Color is the third style lever. Traditional landscapes carry a wider color range — pinks, whites, soft yellows across the seasons. Modern landscapes restrict color, often to two or three (green, white, one accent) and lean on form rather than bloom. Color discipline is what most amateur designs miss; an unrestricted palette of bloom colors makes a landscape feel busy in any architectural style.

If you're not sure where your home falls — and most homeowners aren't, because the architecture is honestly mixed — take five photos of your front facade in late-afternoon light from different distances and bring them to the property visit. Style direction is one of the easiest things to read together with a designer when you can both see the house.