Luscious Landscapes - Lake Charlevoix
HomeLife’s hunt for glorious gardens turns up quite a bouquet
By Beth Anne Piehl
Photography by G. Randall Goss
See also:
Luscious Landscapes - Bay Harbor
Luscious Landscapes - The Blossoms
Those seeded with landscaping creativity can look at a bluff that descends into a precipitous drop and picture how the driveway will curve around, where the waterfalls and streams should cascade and where a stretch of succulent grasses will punch out in delicious lime.
Almost like artists sketching out their next canvas, landscape architects can see the beauty beyond calf-high muck and acres of ancient tree debris and envision where more than a million annuals, perennials, trees and shrubs will punctuate and prosper.
Landscape designers like Maureen Parker and Bob Drost can shape the most extreme acreage into garden-tour grandeur even when it’s surrounded by wetlands on one side and Lake Charlevoix on another. At the shoreline stunner featured here, the grove of natural challenges was another day at the office for Parker, Drost and builders Glennwood Custom Builders in Petoskey.
“Just getting the site figured out was a challenge,” said Jeff Collins, president of Glennwood. “There are no easy lots left. They are all taken.”
Collins said building this Lake Charlevoix home required months and months of preplanning to ensure it didn’t encroach on the protected wetlands. Drost and Parker, meanwhile, pollinated the property with a nursery full of native and non-native plants, while incorporating five man-made water features and thousands of individual plants, flowers and fauna.
The result is an oasis for the Chicago-area homeowner who said the local property is where he’s now put down his permanent roots.
“I think we were all pretty much in concert in what we’d like to see for the property and how it turned out,” said the homeowner, who is semi-retired. “I’ve been coming to Northern Michigan since I was 2 years old, and for the last 35 years I’ve always had some property — in Harbor, Leland and a home on the south shore of Lake Charlevoix. It was always my intent to make this my permanent residence.”
How they did it:
Parker, of Common Ground Landscapes in Boyne City, (www.commongroundlandscapes.com) and Drost, owner of Drost Landscape (www.drostlandscape.com) in Petoskey, have often paired up at the region’s most esteemed private estates. They were the maestros behind two of the masterpieces — the Lake Charlevoix and Bay Harbor properties — pictured here.
Let’s save space for the pretty pictures. Some brief points of interest about what you’re seeing:
On Lake Charlevoix
When the landscapers and builders first arrived on the property a few years ago, “there were a lot of wetlands issues,” explained Parker, stepping along stone stairs skirting one of the many water features here, a stream cascading downhill.
Drost notes there are 40 irrigation zones on the property, plus the five separate water features.
The property initially included several structures from the previous owner, at an upper level lot that became a staging area and literal nursery for the construction and landscaping.
Down below, the irregularly shaped parcel would give Glennwood a good go at configuring the house to maximize lot space while adhering to regulations of the Department of Natural Resources and Department of Environmental Quality.
“We had to do a lot of reading of the rules,” said Drost.
Included in the design effort are two intricately- engineered bridges, one passing over the driveway and one serving as the entry to the garage. Shoring up that area and the perimeter of the basement required huge sheet piling from Walstrom Marine, Collins said.
While HomeLife initially came for the landscaping, once we toured the home, completed in 2008, we asked to share shots of the house, too. Some of the coolest features: Infinity-edge pool (by Drost); hundreds of feet of sandy shoreline; lower-level fitness room with sauna; exquisite woodwork; library; two upstairs bedroom suites; three lower-level bedrooms; eight bathrooms; and a guest apartment above the three-plus car garage. Plus, there’s a seasonal room situated next to one of the water features to enjoy the sound of the stream trickling past.
Article continues: Luscious Landscapes - Bay Harbor