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Beach/House, Fall 2024

Shadows lengthen. The crowds are gone. The weather is at its most glorious. Autumn arrives and cozy season begins on the Outer Cape. It’s the time of year when people here head back indoors to tackle some of the household projects that were impossible to even think about during summer’s hubbub. Evenings that were spent dining outdoors are now savored in front of a fire. In this special edition of the Provincetown Independent's home, garden, and design pages, we’re easing our way into the fall projects that come before the year-end holidays and the promise of the new year ahead.

Shadows lengthen. The crowds are gone. The weather is at its most glorious. Autumn arrives and cozy season begins on the Outer Cape. It’s the time of year when people here head back indoors to tackle some of the household projects that were impossible to even think about during summer’s hubbub. Evenings that were spent dining outdoors are now savored in front of a fire. In this special edition of the Provincetown Independent's home, garden, and design pages, we’re easing our way into the fall projects that come before the year-end holidays and the promise of the new year ahead.

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isn’t once a week. We also have clients<br />

who are irrigation-conscious<br />

enough that they’re OK with the<br />

lawn becoming toasty in midsummer,<br />

even if it’s a summer house.<br />

In August, if it rains, then the lawn<br />

comes back. Generally speaking,<br />

lawns that allow some wild growth<br />

such as dandelions, crabgrass, and<br />

clover can be maintained by hand.”<br />

Trees<br />

“It’s educational to show our clients<br />

which trees are valuable and which<br />

are less so,” says LeBlanc. “Especially<br />

those that are invasive species<br />

or so diseased that they might<br />

fall on the house. A lot of urban areas<br />

have trees that have outgrown<br />

their usefulness. Removing a tree<br />

selectively along the edge can bring<br />

in a more interesting skyline.”<br />

Materials<br />

“Reuse is important to us,” says<br />

LeBlanc. “We used old bricks found<br />

on the site for new paving, pathways,<br />

and an apron. The homeowners<br />

love collecting driftwood<br />

and had made a garden arch of<br />

pieces gathered from the beach.<br />

They also created a kind of a ground<br />

cover of driftwood by laying it<br />

down horizontally so that plants<br />

can grow through and around it. We<br />

used reclaimed granite for the paving<br />

stones, which were once curbs.<br />

They have variable widths and an<br />

interesting roughness to them that<br />

ties into the landscape.”<br />

bayberry. The parking area is centrally<br />

located and visible between<br />

the new guest house and the main<br />

house. We made a rainwater permeable<br />

section of gravel, delineated<br />

by the granite paving stones,<br />

that morphs into the more flowery<br />

garden area.”<br />

Conservation<br />

“Anything within 100 feet of the resource<br />

area [a protected area such<br />

as a marsh or wetland] is in the conservation<br />

commission’s purview,”<br />

says LeBlanc. “The commission<br />

will allow you to do certain things<br />

if you can prove you’re protecting<br />

the resource area. In this case,<br />

we reduced the lawn and managed<br />

invasives. It helps that in our area<br />

there are a lot of conservation setbacks,<br />

because it makes homeowners<br />

think about native plantings in<br />

a different way. But we’re not going<br />

to only do what conservation<br />

mandates. We’re incorporating the<br />

concepts into the garden areas next<br />

to the house as well. That way the<br />

garden feels more at home in its<br />

environment, wherever your house<br />

is located.”<br />

want it. Is it purely a visual statement?<br />

Or do they want it for kids<br />

or dogs to play on? If it were up to<br />

me, I would avoid lawns, but there<br />

are different kinds. There’s the<br />

high-maintenance lawn, where<br />

the lawn folks come and spray and<br />

fertilize. And then there’s a native<br />

mix that’s mowable, and it’s not<br />

all fescues, so the mow schedule<br />

Driveways and<br />

Parking Areas<br />

“We rerouted the driveway, which<br />

used to run straight up the hill,”<br />

says LeBlanc. “So, reestablishing a<br />

new edge of natives there was important.<br />

The design zigzags probably<br />

more than I would normally do<br />

when laying out a driveway, but our<br />

clients were adamant that we keep<br />

all the trees. We designed the new<br />

driveway to have the strip of rough<br />

grass down the middle, like you see<br />

all over Truro. We just let whatever<br />

grows grow there so that it feels<br />

like you are driving up a dirt road to<br />

get to the house through pines and<br />

A permeable gravel and paver motor court sits next to the perennial garden. (Photo by Neil<br />

Landino)<br />

t Marsh from the house, which was designed by Hammer Architects. (Photo by Keith LeBlanc)<br />

Foraged driftwood creates an arch and low barrier along a walkway. (Photo by Keith<br />

LeBlanc)

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