Terraces and cedar structure on the Lake Minnetonka shore

Lake Minnetonka properties ask more of a landscape than a flat suburban lot does. The grade falls away toward the water, the best view is rarely the one you get from the back door, and everything has to work around a shoreline you cannot move.

Our work on these sites usually starts with where people will actually sit. A bluestone terrace sized for real furniture, a cedar pergola to give it a ceiling, and planting that frames the water rather than walling it off. Steps and paths carry the house down toward the lake edge without turning the slope into a staircase.

The structure, the paving and the planting are drawn together and built by our own crews, so the proportions that looked right on the plan are the ones you end up standing in.