2025 APLD Award: Rock Star Formal Meets South Minneapolis
2025 APLD Award: Rock Star Formal Meets South Minneapolis
The Field design team has done it again! A HUGE CONGRATULATIONS to Karina Greenwood & Jason Rathe for winning a 2025 APLD International Landscape Design Award. The awards program includes several categories based on budget ranges, awarding Bronze, Silver, & Gold honors in each. We’re thrilled to announce that we took home Gold! These awards honor excellence in landscape design and are judged on the basis of difficulty, craftsmanship, attention to detail, and execution.
When longtime clients of Field moved from a more eclectic urban area to a more formal home and neighborhood, they reached out for assistance in bringing their vision to life in their new space. They wanted their front-landscape to honor the formality of the surroundings but add unexpected flourishes – “much like an aging rockstar who buys an English estate!” Other wishes included low-maintenance plants, minimal lawn area, a seating area, and lighting to highlight the nighttime landscape.
The primary “move” in our design is the sweeping, undulating curves of the new walkway and steps. Achieving the free-spiritedness and grandiosity the client desired while still flowing naturally from the home’s formal colonial portico. Arching borders of gravel define the landscape’s elements while mimicking the curves of the walkways.
The landscape is organized into three main views: (1) the perspective from the city sidewalk towards the home, highlighting the slope as a central feature; (2) the view from inside the home, through the large windows and small sitting area, looking out towards the city street; and (3) the berm on the south side, which serves as the endpoint for the gently arching gravel borders.
Neighbors passing by on the sidewalk are offered a dramatic view. The front highlights a mass planting of Sesleria autumnalis, also known as Autumn Moor Grass. Clean shapes of seeded no-mow sedge lawn create negative space in the upper yard and flow down into the slope. The slope features a blue weathered edge boulder wall that acts as a sitting wall and narrow junipers that lend a formal “whimsy”. Roses and plants with thorns were two main themes that complemented the design goals, and the front slope hosts white roses as well as the native “surprise plant” – Prickly Ash.
The floor-to-ceiling windows on either side of the front door are highlights of the house. We arranged the landscape and included landscape lighting to ensure that this view is impressive. The view encompasses the no-mow lawn, the arching gravel areas, and the tall plants on the top of the front slope. We chose shorter plants for the foundation beds, so this view was not impeded.
The south side berm is the final element of the landscape design, featuring a variety of plants with contrasting shapes, sizes, and leaf types. The planting is anchored by two Crataegus crus-galli (Hawthorn), with Juniper ‘Trautman’ providing upright accents. There are several varieties of “ball-shaped” plants throughout, including Chamaecyparis, Thuja, and Amsonia. The grasses pull together the design with their finer foliage, carrying through the grassy theme from the front slope.
