Hardscape Terracing

The stone is in – walkways, raised beds, cribstone benches and an installation by Daniel. While just finished Friday evening, it looks like it has been here for a long time. Before the snow comes, the plan is to install the steel raised beds and soil so that planting can happen in the spring.

Daniel’s installation is beautiful. It integrates well with the terraces and the surrounding context of fields – with meaningful resonances to this place and beyond. The form draws you in from afar – and helps to define the area in which it resides. The inspiration for the form is from Etruscan tombs where the corner corbelling supports the dome of the structure. I appreciate that inspirational provenance given my love of Italy and the classical period. The piece is also intended to evolve and grow over time – through the addition of stones that we pull from our gardens – as the stone pile just to the east of this piece did when the Graves brothers lived here a decade ago.

Throughout the project, I’ve tried to stay true to the character of this place.

That’s part of the power of living in a spot where memory is so ingrained. There

is an inherent responsibility that comes with living here to maintain the poetry of the Graves brother’s legacy and interweave our own story with this place and not run a museum, where we are only the care takers. This land is continually unfolding as is history, and an interesting thing to me is what the history of the landscape tells me about the Graves and how they lived here. I am eager to integrate our stories with the recollections of our neighbors and the continuing narrative of the landscape we inhabit here.