Heritage Garden Design

The idea

Gardens that belong

A garden for an old house should not look new.

It should look as though it has been settling into place for a century, and as though someone has simply been keeping it well.

Most landscaping is installed at its peak — everything flowering on delivery day, and a slow decline from there. A garden built the other way starts modestly and improves every year. It is a slower promise and a better one.

How I work

Four things every garden gets

The house comes first

A historic facade already has rhythm, proportion and ornament. The planting answers it rather than competing with it.

Texture before colour

Flowers last a fortnight. Foliage, bark, seed heads and winter silhouette last the rest of the year.

Layered, never lined up

Nothing sits in rows. Plants overlap the way they do on a woodland floor, in drifts that read as one composition.

Planted for maturity

Spacing is set for what a plant will actually become — which means visible mulch in the first season, and no digging out and replacing in year four.

Recent work

The Woodland Garden Terrace

A raised front terrace on Douglass Street, in the Centre Park Historic District. Thirty years of pachysandra under a mature dogwood, holding the slope because nothing else had been asked to.

The whole bed was cleared by hand — no rototilling inside the tree’s root zone — and replanted as a layered woodland floor. Christmas fern carries it through February, blue hosta gives the mass, and bigroot geranium took over the sidewalk edge the pachysandra had been doing. Planted at mature spacing, so there is mulch showing in the first season and no digging things out in year four.

The terrace before work — pachysandra and vinca under a mature dogwood — Before

The same terrace planted and mulched, August 2026 — Phase I installed · August 2026

During installation

The bed stripped and the soil turned and amended

Plants set out in their pots before planting

Also

Other work

The Lavender Walk

A front garden a few doors along. A tired lawn on a shaded slope became two beds and a lawn worth keeping — sun planting at the sidewalk, shade planting at the porch.

Lavender and heuchera along the path edge

Foundation planting of hosta and heuchera at the porch

Seasonal containers

Porches, entryways and steps, planted four times a year. These are from my own porch — the same approach I bring to a client’s.

A planted hanging basket on a Victorian porch

Services

What I do

Garden design

Measured planting plans for historic homes — drawings, a plant schedule with botanical names, and a budget that separates design, material and labour.

Garden renovation

Removing tired or overgrown planting and replacing it with something built to last.

Seasonal containers

Porches, entryways and steps, planted four times a year.

Garden lighting

Low-voltage lighting for paths, steps and specimen trees.

Plant selection

For people who would rather not choose — sourced, and chosen for the conditions they are actually going into.

Let’s look at your garden

Every project starts with a visit — measuring the space, watching where the light falls, and finding out what is really growing there before anything is priced.

610.698.1344 michael.wright@heritagegardendesign.com

Thank you — that came through.

I read every one myself and usually reply within two days.

Or tell me about the garden

Your name

Phone

Property address

Needed so I can look at the house and the light before I visit.

What you have in mind

Rough budget

Anything else

I read every one myself and usually reply within two days. Nothing is priced without a visit.