Pergolas & Garden Structures

Shade you can plan a lunch under changes how a terrace gets used. A pergola sized and oriented correctly casts usable shade from June through September without darkening the rooms of the house behind it. We draw the shadow it will cast at 2pm in July before we draw the structure itself, and we size the timbers generously, because a pergola that reads spindly against open sky will read worse against a Kentucky storm front.

Our carpentry is timber-frame in spirit: mortise and tenon where the load calls for it, through-bolted oak or rough-sawn cedar elsewhere, no bracket-and-screw kits. Posts land on stone plinths, not bare concrete, so the structure joins the garden's masonry family. Left unfinished, cedar silvers to the gray of weathered fence board within three years, which is precisely the color this landscape wants.

The plants are half the architecture. Native crossvine and Carolina jessamine give evergreen cover and spring bloom; a fifty-year wisteria is a commitment we will talk through honestly, because it will eat an undersized structure. Every pergola we build ships with its planting plan and the wire or lattice the first three years of training require.

Beyond pergolas we build arbors over gates, covered garden pavilions with cedar shake roofs, potting sheds that earn a place in the view, and screened rooms where the property borders woodland. Each is drawn to the house's roof pitch and trim language, so the garden's buildings and the family's house agree with each other.