Explore the Beauty of a Hilltop Garden in Old Lyme

David A. Noyes Jr., better known as DJ, designed the pool cabana to include its own wet bar. A bathroom and a changing room are accessed through side doors, and a gate in the fence leads to parking, streamlining pool parties for the resident teens.

Stairs from the house lead to the pool terrace, which features lawn panels flanking a lounging area. “The kids needed green space,” explains Noyes. Natural cleft bluestone surrounds the new infinity-edge pool.

The firepit’s backdrop is a textural mixture of Karl Foerster feather reed grass, Rozanne geraniums, catmint, Little Lime hydrangeas, and bayberry.

The designers gave the catch basin its own bluestone terrace planted with creeping mazus. The Russian sage-flanked walkway leads to the spa and firepit path.

A single slab of stone serves as the swimming pool’s diving platform. Masses of Walker’s Low catmint and Russian sage billow in the surrounding garden beds.

The catch-basin terrace enjoys both the music of cascading water and the buzz of pollinators attracted by echinacea, joe-pye weed, mountain mint, Russian sage, purpletop vervain, and fountain grass.

Terraces are accessed via multiple routes with Russian sage, echinacea, Karl Foerster feather reed grass, joe-pye weed, and hydrangeas acting as recurring themes.

Sarah Foley needed a garden—fast. She had purchased an Old Lyme hilltop house and its two and a half acres in April 2020, right as the pandemic was transforming life as we knew it. With three boys (two of them teenagers), outdoor space was imperative, and Foley was feeling more than slightly overwhelmed. Unfortunately, her new home’s “almost a jungle” landscape wasn’t helping. Beyond a more orderly, natural-with-purpose presentation, her main directive when she hired landscape designer David A. Noyes Jr. of Water Street Design Associates was low maintenance.

“Everything he proposed was spot on,” Foley says.

From Noyes’s perspective, Foley was the model client, but the landscape was a different story. Challenges were omnipresent, starting with the pool. For good reason, Foley wanted to relocate it. “The original pool sat directly at the bottom of a set of stairs,” says Noyes. “If you tripped, you would fall in.”

Perched fifty feet above street level and boasting a breathtaking view of the Connecticut River Valley, the site was precariously steep, so terracing was vital. A narrow lounging/dining terrace now skirts the back of the house. Two levels down, Noyes designed a multipurpose cabana for the new pool. The structure speaks “a similar language as the house,” says Noyes, who incorporated formal columns and a pergola that shades outdoor lounging.

Foley envisioned an infinity-edge pool, and Noyes took that concept to another level (literally) by giving the necessary catch basin its own terrace, where the view is framed in billowing perennials. The serenade of the pool’s cascade into the basin makes the spot particularly tranquil. And a perennial-surrounded spa extends the water experience beyond summer.

Buffeting it all, naturalistic plantings serve up swaying, pollinator-humming swaths of color. The plantings needed to withstand strong winds, and Noyes selected stalwart Russian sage, ornamental grasses, hydrangeas, joe-pye weed, catmint, and mountain mint to provide year-round beauty. “It’s heaven on Earth, truly,” Foley says.

Ultimately, the team kept their promise to have the kids in the pool by July 2021 thanks to project manager Tim Kenniston. And the family’s appreciation for the space has only grown over time. “We can sit outside in our own little sanctuary,” says Foley. “There’s never a dull moment.”

Project Team
Landscape design: Water Street Design Associates