Charlottesville -- Skye Fall

Skye Fall is a 3.5-acre property with views of the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia and a French Normandy style white stucco house built in 1992. The current owners purchased the property in 2002 and added a new wing, driveway, entry court, rear terrace, lawn and plants in 2006. The master landscape plan emphasized the architecture with some bare white walls. The owners acquired a revised landscape plan in 2012 that added plantings to define garden rooms with a European influence. A boxwood hedge was added to enclose the west lawn, which has the best views, and a hornbeam hedge with an espaliered arch was added to screen the east side service and parking areas. A perennial and annual border on this side of the house adds spring color from allium, anemones, camassia, tulips and narcissus, punctuated with box globes and bordered and divided by low-clipped box hedges. The foundation plantings are primarily purple and white and look more sophisticated than the earlier wattle boxed herb garden. The covered terrace looks out to a meadow with magnolia and cherry blossoms in spring with an understory of narcissus and snowdrops. A stone fireplace on the terrace enables winter use. On the west side of the house a bluestone terrace has planted containers and successive arbors covered with musk roses, leading to the swimming pool. A shrub border of vitex, butterfly bush, caryopteris and lespedeza provides summer bloom. The infinity swimming pool, added in 2019, is landscaped with columnar junipers for a Mediterranean atmosphere. Another border for cutting year round was added in 2021, planted with viburnum, lilac, abelia, roses, clematis, zinnias, cleome and cosmos. A stone walkway and stairs lead to a clapboard-sided, copper roofed garden and pool house. Persons associated with the garden's design: Nelson-Byrd Landscape Architects (c. 2006) Charles J. Stick, landscape architect (2012- ).