Chesapeake Home

New Edge Design’s well-made landscape incorporates two distinct rooms:
The quiet reflective garden and the fun family garden (see below).

Each year landscape designers from all over the region descend on the Maryland State Fairgrounds to show-off their talents. Once again, ChesapeakeHome Magazine was invited to judge and present the ChesapeakeHome Landscaper Award. This year’s award goes to New Edge Design, LLC for a garden designed by company co-owners Johanna Hoehner and Michelle Cheek. The garden features two distinct areas: a calming green and white garden designed to encourage escape and contemplation; and a colorful, vibrant garden designed to be fun for the whole family.

Diverse rooms within a larger garden are common to contemporary landscape design. But when challenged to create distinct rooms within a smaller space, and indoors no less, Hoehner and Cheek blend the two spaces seamlessly. The space is integrated, and yet the two distinct rooms appeal to the diverse activities and moods of those who will inhabit the garden—not just the whole family, but also guests. According to Cheek and Hoehner, “A garden should be an extension of the home, a space that you live in, not just a display area.”

To that end, the lower garden features a comfortable sitting area, a fishpond, and a children’s playhouse, as well as colorful and fragrant plant material. Just a few steps up through a custom stone archway leads to the green and white garden. Here the blooms of lilac, tulip, Viburnum, Fothergilla, Aquilegia, azalea, and hellebores subtly blend with textures of green and blue foliage, creating space that is at once dynamic and static. The still reflecting pool is punctuated with a floating sculpture acted upon only by the processes of wind.

In evaluating the garden, our judges primarily assessed the garden’s feasibility for Mid-Atlantic homeowners and gardeners in terms of implementation, budget, maintenance, plant selection, and scope. In addition to these criteria, they judged overall form and design as well as quality of craftsmanship and plant material. New Edge Design has made exceptional use of walls, fencing, archways, stone walkways, and outdoor structure as well as a well-honed plant palette. The garden is a functional extension of the home—beautiful to look at, but also perfect for contemplation, relaxation, and kids at play. ß