The family was finishing a major renovation of their new home. Now it was time to turn their attention to the backyard.
From the street, the house looks like a lovely suburban home; the backyard is the real treasure. The house and pool sit at the top of a gentle slope, leading several hundred feet down toward the waters of Lake Simcoe. The owners wanted to create a pool and sitting area that would be worthy of the gorgeous setting. So, they called Alex Scott.
Alex is the third-generation owner of Scott’s Garden Centre, a company his father and his grandparents founded. He relished the setting – and the challenges – this property would provide.
“The pool was an interesting part of this project,” he says. The old pool surround had been made of Holland pavers – standard four-by-eight-inch bricks in a monotone colour.
“They knew they didn’t want that, but they didn’t have a specific idea of what they wanted,” says Alex.
So he proposed a randomized geometric pattern using three different kinds of stone. The main stone would be an Umbriano in French Grey. Umbriano comes in sizes ranging from seven to 21 inches, allowing an array of geometric options. “And I love the grey and white tones in the French Grey,” Alex says. “We used random bundles of stone, so there would be some subtle variation in the colours.”
To set those off he designed accent lines using basalt-coloured Copthorne pavers. The dark shade was chosen to nicely complement the lighter grey.
And around the pool itself, he chose a bullnose Spanish coping stone. “These are very smooth, very comfortable underfoot as you’re getting in or out of the pool,” he says.
The clients loved the plan, although there were some challenges. “We started this project in 2020, at the height of COVID,” Alex says. “Everyone was panic buying everything, and supply chain problems were incredible. I’d select one stone, and suddenly it was unavailable. I’d pick another, and the same thing would happen.”
Through persistence – and through the contacts one develops after a lifetime in the business – Alex was able to source the stone and get to work.
Height adjustment
There were other challenges in store, of course. For one thing, the lip of the pool was nearly a foot above the floor height of the home’s lower level. So, while there was a walkout from the lower level, there needed to be a step up to the pool.
The clients wanted a shaded sitting area adjacent to the house, to take advantage of the second-floor deck. Because of the height of the deck, that sitting area essentially had to be a sunken patio – a lovely design feature, as long as it didn’t retain water.
“You always want to be asking where the water is going to go, particularly when you’re doing any work right beside the house,” says Alex. To address that, he and his crew installed French drains leading off the sitting area, with a gentle slope to the patio to ensure that no water could collect beneath the deck or run toward the house.
Building the pool surround was also complicated by the shape of the pool – which is geometric and irregular. “The biggest challenge was the shape of the pool itself,” says Alex. “The coping stone in particular needed a lot of very precise cutting on some unusual angles. Fortunately, we have some excellent craftspeople on our team, and they did a superb job.”
A project grows
As the clients saw the quality of the work Alex and team were doing, they naturally decided to ask them to expand their scope. A privacy fence was built along one side of the property. Then came a retaining wall to support a garage. Then landscaping the front side of the house to match the rear.
“It’s a large family, and they realized they weren’t going to have enough parking spaces,” says Alex. “But we were able to work within the city’s restrictions and create an additional single car space in front of the house.”
The parking space and a walkway to the front door were finished using Beacon Hill stone, which nicely complements the Umbriano in the backyard. The choice ties the two spaces together, a nice touch even though you can’t see one from the other.
In the end, the clients weren’t the only ones who were impressed. “We ended up working on quite a few properties on this street,” Alex smiles.
TEXT A. WAGNER-CHAZALON
PHOTOS ANDREW FEARMAN