Under the Live Oaks | Charleston, SC

A whole-property landscape around a white house and its live oaks, in Savannah grey brick, lit by forty fixtures after dark.

This Charleston job covered the whole property, from the front walk down to the water, on a lot where the live oaks were already the main event. Our job was to build around them without competing.

Out front, the lawn is zoysia. The planting runs the length of the property and changes as you move through it: camellias and Japanese maples for structure, boxwood and ligustrum for the clean edges, palms for height, then sweetgrass and agapanthus where the light gets in, with tractor seat plant and mondo grass carpeting the shade under the oaks and perennials threaded through for color.

Out back, artificial turf keeps the yard green and usable under the trees. The walks and the patio are Savannah grey brick laid in herringbone, the reclaimed brick you see all over old Charleston, and white salt-void concrete stepping stones cross the lawn. At the end of the walk stands the pavilion, with a tongue-and-groove ceiling, Hardie trim and a vertical tongue-and-groove Hardie back wall.

The landscape lighting is what you notice at night. Roughly forty fixtures do the work: the entry steps glow, the herringbone walk leads you out to the pavilion, and the live oaks are lit from below so the whole canopy hangs over the yard after dark. Irrigation runs underneath all of it, out of sight.