Patios & Walkways

A terrace is a room, and it should be sized like one. We draw patios around the table they need to hold and the parties they need to survive, not around a stock dimension. Twelve people at dinner needs twenty by sixteen feet clear of steps; two chairs and a low wall by the herb bed needs far less, and is often the space a family uses most.

Material is a long conversation with the house. Sawn thermal bluestone reads formal and crisp against painted brick; full-color Kentucky limestone, laid in an irregular bond with creeping thyme in the joints, belongs to older stone houses and farm properties. Clay brick, laid on edge in a running bond, suits the town gardens off the older streets of Lexington. We bring full-size samples to the site and lay them on the ground before anyone commits.

What separates a thirty-year terrace from a five-year one is invisible: eight inches of compacted, open-graded base, correct fall away from the house, edge restraint that does not creep, and joints designed for how the surface will actually be used. Our masons build to the standard of the dry-stone walls that have outlined this county's farms for two centuries. Some of them learned on those walls.

Walks get the same seriousness at smaller scale. An entry walk five feet wide lets two people arrive side by side. A garden path of stepping stones set in sedge slows a walk to the pace a garden deserves. Both are drawn, not improvised.