Inviting outdoor area at New Skete Monastery invites visitors to stop, sit and enjoy.
Photo courtesy of Keith Davitt

By Mark Haverstock

When it comes to hardscaping, where designers and landscape architects add non-plant elements to landscaping, stone is a natural choice. It offers so many appealing options, from a rustic stacked wall to a flowing waterfall; or a simple granite bench to an intricately carved gazebo. Maybe you like the solid presence of stone — or you just need some strategically placed boulders.

"With stone, you have the real deal, not a replica," said Jason Hestekin, sales representative for Fond du Lac Stone. "It's difficult to get that natural, rustic feel from concrete. Most people who choose natural stone, whether its boulders, slabs or outcroppings, want that natural, rustic look." You can install your stone and arrange it the way you want. Within a year or so, once you get your grass and plants and vegetation going, it will give you the appearance that it's been there forever.

Closeup of pond and waterfall at New Skete Monastery.
Photo courtesy of Keith Davitt

Back to Nature
"I think there's a trend of building on large wooded properties — people want a three-acre lots so it looks like they're living in the country," Hestekin said. "Natural products lend themselves more to a rustic, country feel." The other part is the maintenance — there isn't any. He noted that the natural changes that the climate presents are part of how the stone may or may not change over time. If moss grows on it, that's the way it's supposed to be. Stone's beauty increases the longer you have it installed on your property.

Stone Crossing, a residential development in Colorado Springs, Colo., features open spaces with a country feel, including more than a mile of neighborhood trails and almost 22 acres of dedicated open space. Among these spacious surroundings is a stone bridge constructed from Siloam Stone's layered sedimentary sandstone, designed by Wenk and Associates of Denver. "It's part of a pond arrangement that has several water features," said Matthew Mueller, general manager for Siloam Stone." It features patios and steps, in addition to the walkway."

Below: This observatory/gazebo in upstate New York was designed as a romantic spot where visitors can be one with nature and view the surrounding mountains. Photo courtesy of Sana Stone
Photo courtesy of Sana Stone

Mueller noted that customers are after the rustic look, especially with stairs and entryways. "They're trying to create an environment that looks like the home belongs in the existing environment," he said. "With Siloam Stone, that's been our niche; the natural look is what people love about our products." Siloam supplies local stone exclusively from their 640-acre deposit in southern Colorado.

Surrounded by rolling pastureland and overlooking beautiful Lake Grapevine, the Gaylord Texan Resort pays tribute to the six regions of Texas: the Gulf Coast, Hill Country, the High Plains and Prairies, the Pineywoods and Swamps, Brush Country, and the Mountains & Deserts. Inside the atrium area of the resort is a hardscape representing the Hill Country area of Texas. "The natural stone you see is the wall rising out of the rock in the background," said Robert V. Barnes, III, executive vice president of Dee Brown Inc., an award-winning mason contractor in Garland, Texas. "We used several different types of Oklahoma sandstone from the Canadian River area for this project."

Another section of the resort that utilizes the same variety of Oklahoma sandstone is a grand stairway located in one of the courtyards, where it is used as veneer as well as the cap. "The architect didn't want joints — he basically wanted everything to fit together. Though it is laid in mortar, it doesn't appear to be," Barnes added. "You've got to have an artist working on that wall, someone who can see the material and make the puzzle pieces fit." More than 80,000 square feet of stone came together to complete this one feature.

Fond du Lac outcropping.
Photo courtesy of Fond du Lac Stone

Preserving Tradition
Ancient craft with modern design is what New York's Sana Stone provides for its clients. "The sort of handcrafting we do is difficult to accomplish in any reasonable way in the United States today; it's a very time-consuming process," said Nayanna Currimbhoy, one of the firm's partners. Even in her native India, it was a dying art until Sana Stone

supported a revival of the stone carving community in Jaipur, approximately 160 miles from New Delhi. The Jaipur workshop now supplies customers with detailed, hand-carved screens, sculptures and structures.

Narrow entryway to Tucson, Ariz. home incorporates indigenous sandstone, washed gravel imbedded in cement and poured cement with a stucco surface. Plants and forms are scaled to match available area.
Photo courtesy of Keith Davitt

One elegant example is The Raincatcher, a stone observatory/gazebo located on an estate in upstate New York. Constructed of yellow limestone, the structure stands on four pillars that support a dome. The dome features a central oculus, which lets in sunlight, moonlight, rain and snow, and creates a moving shadow in the space according to the passage of the sun through the sky.

Hand-carved moon screens that support the benches display the phases of the moon. An intricately carved stone lotus flower embedded in the center of the dome functions as a rain catcher, and compass, and when it fills with rain, becomes a bird bath. The interior of the dome, as well as the base of the columns, are handcrafted to add texture and create a play of light and shadow on the stone. To add to its mystique, the yellow limestone turns golden when wet.

The 20,000-pound observatory is constructed to use compression. Like stone construction in ancient times, the collar of the dome works as the keystone, locking the dome into place. All parts of the observatory are notched into place using mortise and tenon joints. There is no mortar, though copper pins are added for additional security. The lintels that hold up the dome distribute the weight to the columns and then to the foundation.

Portable crane aids in exact placement of stone and boulders.
Photo courtesy of Keith Davitt

Landscaping Layout
Almost all of Keith Davitt's projects utilize natural stone. As a landscape architect, he appreciates the integrity and look of natural stone. "You can't really replace that," he said. "Concrete used as concrete is one thing, but concrete cast to imitate stone is a totally different animal. It doesn't take any skill to work with these fabricated materials, but it takes a real craftsman to work with natural stone — that becomes part of the beauty of the garden."

The Art of Hardscaping When landscape architect Keith Davitt moved to Cambridge, N.Y., he soon realized that most people think about gardens as simply a collection of plants. "They don't think about outdoor living structure; they don't think about hardscaping," he said. "They're missing the whole possibility of what outdoor structure offers in the form of outdoor living, as well as making their gardens look better." Davitt said that if you look at any perennial bed and embed a piece of hardscape in it — a pot, a stone, a sculpture — the garden will instantly look better. "The reason for this is when you're looking at plants, what you're really seeing are 10,000 pinpoints of light," he explained. "If you've ever tried to draw a plant, you know how complex a structure it can be. In comparison, an urn, a vase or a birdbath are very simple forms. The eye is able to rest on them and relax, and then can go out and survey the garden again, refreshed." Hardscaping provides balance and focal points, and offers a sense of motion or enclosure — all the many uses that structures provide but plants alone can't. "Also consider this: How many gardens that you go back to in ten years that are totally plants are still there?" Davitt asked. "With hardscaping you have more permanence, durability, and delineation of space. Hardscaping gives you more lasting environments."

Davitt typically doesn't do a project for the sake of being unique. "However, it often comes out that way when you select materials with some degree of sensitivity for their impact," he said. "What I'm always trying to do is to create a beautiful environment and whatever is going to help me get that quality dictates what I choose." He added that every stone is different; unlike with prefabricated materials, with each stone, you have a new opportunity to create something that's completely natural and unpredictable. It will combine with the stones you've already laid up in some unique way.

Design is more a matter of discovery than creation according to Davitt. His bluestone walkway project in Brewster, N.Y., is one good example. "I'm always designing in response to the client and the property itself," he explained. "My client had both contemporary and classical tastes, and the house exterior was contemporary." The walkway was composed of broad, deep steps that lend a sense of spaciousness as opposed to narrower steps. The sweeping S-curve also lends grace to the project.

Sometimes, practical needs help determine design parameters. The Monastery at New Skete project in Cambridge, N.Y., began with an alternative to a large set of concrete steps that the residents disliked. Originally, they wanted to design a way up to the chapel that was wheelchair accessible and that could easily accommodate a snow blower. "But when I got there, I also saw there was no outdoor living area available, yet this was a destination area for people," Davitt explained. "It was also the desire of the monks and nuns to open up more to the community." Thus began the Meditation Gardens Project, an area terraced with boulders that weigh 1.5 to five tons, featuring a waterfall and two ponds.

Beaver Dam Bush Hammered Steps and Beaver Dam Drywall.
Photo courtesy of Fond du Lac Stone

Attention to Details
One of the biggest challenges in creating outdoor spaces with stone is just getting the stone on the property. "If you're talking about an urban space like my Brooklyn projects, every piece of material had to go through a building," Davitt said. "So when you're talking about moving a two-ton boulder through the building, you need a little time and some ingenuity." He often employs an age-old method used by the pyramid builders of Egypt with some modern updates — heavy PVC pipe under the stone and boards under the pipe to protect the floors. You roll the stone pieces forward and move the back pipes to the front until the stone is safely on the opposite end of the building.

Then there is the challenge of placing them properly, which can be extremely difficult. Davitt had a ship builder make a portable crane to help him move large pieces of rock with reasonable ease and accuracy. "It had to come apart so two people could carry it through a brownstone, [assemble it] on site in a backyard, and be able to lift these very heavy stone pieces and boulders," he said. Other stones and bags of sand are used as counterweights once the crane is assembled.

Sandstone bridge bisects pond and creates a small waterfall.
Photo courtesy of Fond du Lac Stone

	Bluestone walkway incorporates Belgian block. Photo courtesy of Keith Davitt

Designs for small, restricted space also require special attention. When designers are working with compact parameters, they often use materials scaled properly for that spatial area. "You don't use large pieces of stone in a very small space," Davitt said. "The elements need to fit the available space, and when you're working in small spaces, you make the benches a little bit lower than they would normally be. These adjustments give the sense of expanding the space."

One of a Kind
From its formation in the ground through the quarrying, cutting and installation process, each piece of natural stone has its own personality and contributes its unique character to hardscaping projects. "The stone we supply is always one-of-a-kind, although it may have 99 percent of the characteristics of the next batch," Hestekin said. "The similarities are there, but it does have a uniqueness to it that you can tailor to your application. You can really make a project your own."

Though Fond du Lac Stone has a core set of products, just about every project is different in some way. For example, a customer may choose product A and product B, but may only use 30 percent of A and 70 percent of B. Another may go with a 50/50 mix. "Though the projects may have some similarities, there's a completely different feel to them," he said. "Everything becomes a custom project."

This handcarved screen and urn of white marble are located at a private residence in Ghent, N.Y. The screen, called the namaste screen, is in a pyramid shape that comes down to a knife point at the top — the base sits in a marble trough. The low urn works in this case as an outdoor shower.
Photo courtesy of Sana Stone

Resources:
Dee Brown, Inc.
Garland, Texas
(214) 321-6443
www.deebrowncompanies.com

Fond du Lac Stone
Fond du Lac, Wis.
(920) 921-8280
www.fdlstone.com

Keith Davitt, Landscape Architect
Cambridge, N.Y.
(518) 677-8357
www.gardenviews.com

Sana Stone
New York, N.Y.
(212) 228-8396
www.sanastone.com

Siloam Stone
Canon City, Colo.
(719) 275-4275
www.siloamstone.com

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