This landscape design on the Denver Country Club golf course was the first of four Denver projects we did with Bryan Pulte, renowned interior designer. It was a major, major remodel. For starters, we completely tore out the whole existing driveway and part of the related retaining wall, and changed the elevation and grading in major ways.

Before it had been very awkward driving in, as the whole driveway was a straight shot down, creating a very, very poor sense of arrival. Instead, we created a winding, meandering flow that brought you to the arrival plaza. In this photo, you can still feel the curvature of drive behind you, and get a sense of that from looking at the photograph.

New driveway for Pulte project on Denver golf course

Now, instead of the old straight shot driveway that took you immediately to the left side of the house, we created a driveway that curves in such a way that it initially blocks the house from view and then reveals it, giving different glimpses of the house as you enter the property. It’s a long driveway.

We tore out a very large planting bed in front of the front door to create the arrival plaza. In doing so, we sunk the area down by at least 18″ to 2 feet, creating a level plaza. In the photo below, on the right you see both part of the original brick retaining wall and also a new dry stack retaining wall in front. We wanted to keep some of the brick retaining wall for aesthetic reasons, because it reflects the brick used on the house itself. The dry stack wall accomplishes two goals: it is visually attractive and it also covers the foundations of the old brick retaining walls, preventing a frost heaving of those foundations. In some places, we tore out the preexisting retaining walls, building huge freestanding walls to hide the neighbor’s garage doors. This was very tricky in a technical engineering sense.

This is the arrival plaza for the Bryan Pulte project on the golf course in Denver, Colorado

In the arrival plaza above, what we have here initially are some concentric circles, spiraling out into vortical movement. We utilized hand-smoothed colored concrete made to look like natural stone slabs, alternating with precast concrete split-faced cobble. The cobble looks very much like natural stone, with lots of modulation and color, and it also provides a real grip for tires coming down the steep driveway. So it both looks good and it provides a very important function. As the pavement flattens out, it goes into stamped colored concrete. We were working around a lot of mature existing trees to preserve them, another big technical challenge.

Here is a view of the decks and paving for the Pulte project

In the back, up on the left side of the photo above, you see the preexisting deck which had no connection to the ground, so we created a staircase coming down with intricate carpentry bringing people gracefully down from this deck which had been isolated. As one comes down the stairs, one walks around a water feature that is the focal point for this small garden space. The upper pool of this water feature finds its source underneath the staircase coming down. As one gets down to the ground, there is sandstone paving, and then one goes back onto what looks at first glance like a bridge in the photo, but it’s simply a lower deck where one can put a table and chairs. From that deck we look down into the lower pool of the water feature. The lower pool is a deep pool with the deck cantilevering over it. We brought in massive rocks, so it’s a very intense rock and water feature. Again, we were working around huge existing trees, and we had to work these 5-6 ton boulders carefully so as not to damage the roots of these trees. We were really pushing the limits, and had to work very carefully.

From the decks, one looks to the north for a view of the Denver Country Club golf course.