Backyard Design in Villanova, PA | JHL Landscape Design

Villanova's residential landscape tradition is formal. The properties here, many of them built in the early-to-mid twentieth century,were designed with axial compositions, structured entries, and rear gardens organized around geometry rather than informality. Our backyard design work in Villanova engages that tradition directly. The backyard is the controlled landscape. What lies beyond it, preserved open space, neighboring woodlands, borrowed views,is the natural setting. The garden's job is to mediate between the two.

Axial Organization and Structural Planting

Formal backyard design begins with structure. The organizing axis of the rear garden typically aligns with the architecture: a central terrace, a panel of lawn, a terminal element, fountain basin, planting bed, or view corridor,that gives the composition a clear destination. Secondary axes cross the primary at right angles, organizing subsidiary spaces: a seating area, a cutting garden, an outdoor dining room.

Planting in a formal composition is structural before it is ornamental. Boxwood hedges define the edges of lawn panels and contain planting beds. Hornbeam or Beech pleached into screens create green walls that structure the space without closing the view entirely. Allées of upright trees, Columnar Oaks, Pyramidal Hornbeam,mark transitions between garden rooms. The ornamental planting that fills the beds within this framework is secondary to the framework itself.

Materials Chosen for Architectural Relationship

The hardscape materials in a Villanova formal backyard are selected for their relationship to the architecture of the house. For stone-faced or stucco Georgian architecture, full-color Pennsylvania bluestone in sawn or sandblasted finish reads as historically appropriate and ages with the character the style requires. Brick paving in herringbone or basket-weave patterns suits Federal and Colonial Revival architecture. Precast concrete edging and Belgian block borders provide the crisp lines that formal compositions depend on.

Pool design in formal Villanova backyards tends toward rectangular geometry, a long lap pool or a classic rectangular pool with a stone coping profile that relates to the paving around it. Freeform pools read as incongruous against the axial organization of a formal garden.

The Natural Setting Beyond

A formal garden does not close out the natural landscape, it frames it. The view corridor at the terminus of the primary axis is often a deliberate composition: a break in the planting screen that reveals a meadow, a woodland edge, a distant field. This contrast between control and naturalism is what gives the formal garden its visual tension and its sense of depth.

Our 3D landscape design service allows Villanova clients to evaluate the formal composition in three dimensions before construction, confirming proportions, sightlines, and spatial relationships. For properties where the front approach is also being redesigned, our front yard landscape design work develops the entry sequence as an extension of the formal composition that continues through the gate.

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Considering a formal backyard design for your Villanova property? Contact JHL Landscape Design to schedule a consultation.

JHL Landscape Design, Newtown Square 12 Smedley Ln, Suite #101 Newtown Square, PA 19073 (610) 892-4099 jhllandscapedesign.com