It’s hard to compete with 100 feet of Orchard Lake frontage, but the landscape that Matt Mosher, of Mosher Design Co. in Royal Oak, developed for a couple who moved from Chicago does just that. Part of a property that formerly housed one of the lake’s original estates, the house and gardens underwent a two-year renovation that began in 2019. A new, 4,000-square-foot residence
and guest house replaced the site’s original 1921 farmhouse. “The new owners wanted (it) to be an elegant, classic Colonial estate,” Mosher explains. “They tore down everything except the fireplace. The goal was to create an estate that looked like it had been there for 100 years.”
Mosher, who started his landscape design firm at 17 and has been in the business for 23 years, worked with his father, builder Doyle Mosher of Mosher Dolan, on the site. “We’re fortunate to specialize in high-end and unique boutique projects,” he explains.
The lot is unusual, he says, because it’s long and deep, with a variety of site variations. He tailored each landscape design to the site, sticking with “clean, simple, and classic” plantings such as boxwood and hydrangea around the house. On the water side, he concentrated on fashioning outdoor living spaces, with a rolling lawn to the patio complemented by light plantings around the edge to soften the space.
Other gardens include a 20- by 20-foot vegetable garden, a fruit tree orchard, and a cutting garden. For the vegetables, Mosher designed a 6-foot-tall custom wood and metal fence that’s “protective, but also visually pleasing,” he says. “The main purpose was to keep the deer and other critters out.” The cutting garden includes zinnias, black-eyed Susan, hydrangea, and pollinator mixes.
The homeowners recently purchased 12 additional wetland acres and turned them into a nature sanctuary that showcases a variety of native plants including New England aster and rudbeckia, Mosher says. Although each featured landscape area is part of the same location, the project allowed him to experiment with a variety of styles. “It starts with a structured classic presentation around the house and loosens up in the garden,” he explains. “The deeper you go, the more natural it gets.”
The designer admits that making decisions about the wetland plantings were some of his favorite parts of the project. “It was such a unique experience to design and replicate nature,” he says.
The gardens are beautiful even in winter, when snow blankets the evergreens, trees, serviceberries, and ornamental grasses. “We make sure there’s interest year-round,” Mosher says. “Being a lake house, however, summer is when it really shines.”
