Snead Avenue

A brick ranch on a wooded lot with a new pool in the ground and a covered porch that had nowhere to step down to. Everything between that porch and the tree line is the work: two levels of paver terrace, the brick that holds them apart, the drainage under the lawn, the fence, the beds and the sod.

The terrace is the part worth reading closely. It works on two levels: a dining level off the porch with a curved brick seat wall and a grill surround, and a pool level a step below it. The change is carried on a brick face capped with a soldier course, so the drop is a detail rather than a trip hazard. The same soldier course runs the full free edge of the terrace against the turf, which is what stops a large paver field from looking like a slab dropped on a lawn.

The other half of this job is the half nobody photographs. A river-rock swale runs the property line and turns across the back of the lot, taking water off the slope before it reaches the terrace, and a flagstone walk set in pebble crosses it on stone to a kitchen garden of raised steel planters. Georgia clay does not drink water, it holds it. Every paver, plant and blade of sod on this property lasts exactly as long as that rock does.