Making it Count

New Stone Patio to Maximizing Beautiful Days and Nights

For the family who likes to sit outside and enjoy the outdoors, Calgary can be a difficult place to live. That is, of course, unless you’re strategic with your landscaping. “I’ve been here almost 20 years and my wife and I have grown accustomed to Calgary and its temperature fluctuations,” says Michael Magnien, Assiniboine client and homeowner in Douglasdale Estates.

“The yard itself is kind of tilted towards the north-east, but where we have the patio, it gets sunshine until late afternoon. And we’ve got it situated so that the benches that we put out on the perimeter are the last place that the sun sits on.”

This is such a great project. Here at Assiniboine Lights and Landscapes, we love seeing our clients’ passions come through in their yards.

“One of the things that we really enjoy about the yard now is that we’ve always gravitated towards living close to parklands for outdoor activities,” says Michael.

“That’s why we’re down by Fish Creek Park and our yard echoes that…I always like to be surrounded by trees and greenery.” Of course, the landscape wasn’t always so perfect. Assiniboine worked with the Magniens to fulfill their vision and make it what it is today.

“The space wasn’t very useable before,” says Michael. “We have three kids and the people who we bought the house from were through all that, so they’d converted the yard into an herb garden. They had a pond and all sorts of shrubbery. It had gone feral…you couldn’t use the yard.”

The transformation is amazing. What was once a mess of dying plants, dirt and concrete from the previous deck is now the tidy, sun- catching expression of style that you see in the photos.

“We’re really pleased. We had a basic idea of what we were after but we were able to take some of [Assinibone’s] suggestions and make it all work together,” says Magnien. “And when it came to matching the angles on the patio and the stairs with the angles of the kitchen nook that comes off the house, that was really cool.”

“When it came to matching the angles on the patio and the stairs with the angles of the kitchen nook that comes off the house, that was cool.”

 

All subtleties aside, the landscape is really about capitalizing on favourable weather conditions.

“When the nice weather comes you want to be outside as much as you can to take it in while you have the opportunity,” says Magnien. “ And the way we have the patio right now we can BBQ year-round. It’s great.”

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