Luxury Home

Luxury Home
Outdoor Living

Since the turn of the millennium, interest in outdoor living spaces has grown each year, becoming a buzzword among residential market trends. Just in time for the warm weather months, the following are LHQ’s favorite outdoor living products for 2010.

Aguafina Gardens International

A direct importer of new and reclaimed architectural elements, found artifacts, and stone, AguaFina Gardens International offers a unique collection of hand carved garden décor products. AguaFina fire fountain (above), custom designed for this landscape project, is a large basalt stone that has been cut, hollowed, and polished to accommodate water and fire. The large catch basin allows the water to be recharged when it rains, and also acts as a filter.

Part of its Granite collection, AguaFina’s Sliced Stone Sculptured Light is approximately 42 inched tall and hand carved from one complete stone. Its top is slightly polished with a gradual transition to a natural surface, and its interior is sculpted out to allow room for lighting. The sculpture can also be modified for use as a fountain piece. Find these and more items online at www.aguafina.com.

The Fusion Style Garden

At the heart of a unique house set on a city sized lot in Rochester hills, Michigan is an intimate central court yard garden featuring contemporary design with subtle Asian influences. Accented with authentic sculptures, seating areas, and planters, this setting keeps in scale and theme with the architecture and interior design of the home – a home that was built to downsize from a much larger property. The homeowners wanted to create a very low maintenance, high impact environment with artistic details, and they wanted to space to be scaled to their new lifestyle.

The center of the courtyard patio is a tranquil reflecting pool and fusion style water sculpture that was carved and worked by hand from natural basalt. The pool coping is made from centuries old reclaimed antique Chinese pavers, with black Asian stone from Indonesia accenting the feature. Overlooking the tumbled stone patio are decks off both the mater bed room and living room, build from eco-friendly lumber alternatives. Plantings include espalier apple trees, specimen conifers, perennials, and large Ginkgo tree, which was transplanted and brought from the owners previous home