wild life

For landscape architects Lauren and Stephen Stimson, it’s all about listening to the land

-  SARA JAMES MNOOKIN

AT CHARBROOK, THE MASSACHUSETTS HOME OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTS LAUREN AND STEPHEN STIMSON, THE HOUSE WAS PAINTED WHITE SO THAT IT WOULD ALWAYS BE LEGIBLE IN THE SETTING, WHILE OTHER STRUCTURES WERE CLAD IN CEDAR SHINGLES AND PINE SIDING THAT WOULD WEATHER AND DISAPPEAR INTO THE WOODLAND BEYOND.

A unifying spirit flows through Charbrook, the rural Massachusetts homestead, workspace, and design lab of Lauren and Stephen Stimson, married partners behind landscape architecture firm Stimson. Gently rolling acreage unfolds like a necessary conversation—a little messy at times but deeply satisfying. Where sharp lines impose order, nature blooms to blur them, and rangy garden beds encroach on clean modern structures. Even the name evokes balance, a flame’s “char” meeting the cold, clear rush of a “brook.”

“This tension between wild and groomed is a sweet spot,” says Stephen, who traces his sensibilities to mentors like Dan Kiley and Michael Van Valkenburgh. Modernists with a capital M,” Lauren interjects, noting she came up under ecologists and environmentalists saying, ‘We don’t need a row of trees. We need a giant stormwater basin to filter that dirty water and save the Earth.’”

The couple’s philosophical debates extend up the meandering drive to their home, a playful riff on the classic white clapboard New England farmhouse with dormers deliberately askew (conceived with the help of Dewing Schmid Kearns Architects + Planners and Estes/Twombly Architects). Stephen planted one of those controversial tree rows—a crisp border of Autumn Blaze maples. Along the other side of the approach, Lauren conceived a rambling hedgerow thicket and conduit for wildlife anchored with birch cultivars and native wildflowers. “It teems with life,” she says, pointing to a fox den and the spot where a mother porcupine once nursed a porcupette.