A block from West Market and a short walk from Leesburg’s downtown lies a more than 200-foot-long lushly green backyard and patio with sumptuous, seasonally blooming plants and shade trees.
That’s now. When purchased, the backyard's “water feature” was a 12-foot by 12-foot square brick fountain, better suited for a hotel lobby, and situated so that, wherever you wanted to go, you had to walk around it. Besides viewing it as more of an eyesore than a centerpiece, the new owners had grandchildren and some safety concerns.
Enter River’s Edge Landscapes. The sixteen-year-old firm founded by Paul LaPointe has its roots deep into local nurseries and boasts a licensed landscape architect in Leslie Solitario, who speaks of “choreographing” pathways, eye-capturing focal points, resonant architectural detail, natural shapes and beautiful lines blended with whimsical detail like the violet-headed allium that line the walkways. She shows how new brick embraces and draws together a much-lengthened patio that now runs as long as the lovely side arbor, in perfect proportion to the house.
Paul calls out the precisely patterned flagstones, paving-stones and fieldstone that mesh to form walkways and a wall that accents the yard’s rolling contours. There's a strong but light, black aluminum perimeter fence installed to give the owners’ dog room to roam. Just below the surface lie the more than 500 bulbs and other native plants positioned to provide seasonal color year-round.
