This homeowner was looking for a backyard to impress.
“[The client] said, “I want my friends to walk back here and ask ‘Who the hell designed and built this?’” says Lee Russell, owner of Lee Russell Design and Consulting, in Baton Route, La.
This meant including a perimeter overflow spa flush with the deck, along with fire features and water features added to a modern design cloaked in luxury materials such as stone and glass tile.
The design also needed to preserve an existing, mature palm tree. To establish the layout, Russell used this specimen as a focal point from the home interior. The palm somewhat aligned with the kitchen’s center line, so it and its reflection would provide the perfect vignette from that room. The pool is positioned so its longest wall runs in the direction of the tree, helping lead the eye directly to it.
“I wanted him to be able to sit in his kitchen and look out the back and see the palm tree, and see its reflection in the pool,” Russell says. “Everything else — the fires, the water feature — everything else was going to be peripheral to that tree as the centerpiece of that pool.”
They sought to balance the homeowner’s preference for modern design with the brick and neutral materials predominant in the area. So, while the client had requested white stonework, Russell determined that a more neutral palette was appropriate for the home. An ivory travertine was used instead. The modern touch came from the design’s clean lines, straight-edge coping and stone (rather than bullnosed), along with the choice of scuppers and fire features — both made of stainless steel.
Step pads edged with black pebble form the path to the master bedroom and help break up the deck.
Twelve stainless steel cannon scuppers form a line under one of the fire features. Located about 150 feet from the equipment pad, they required valves close to the pool for control and to save on plumbing. A bank of 12 ball valves, along with feed line and grounding wires, sits in a vault constructed underneath the fire feature pan directly above.
The homeowner wanted to create a unified destination area by joining a fire pit with the spa. To that end, one of the stainless steel fire features and accompanying loungers are set by the spa.
Off to the side, Russell utilized another existing element for the design. To the small, square fountain, he added short, 3-inch-tall bubblers and lighting. Russell didn’t just keep the fountain in place for the sake of recycling.
“When you walk through the front door, you can’t really see the pool yet, but you can see that water feature, so you know there’s something back there,” Russell says. “And that moving water reflects on the walls inside the little courtyard area.”
