Beautiful hardscapes surround lake home

A Lake Home's Stunning Landscape Design Features Hardscapes

Willow Creek Paving Stones' products helped these homeowners and their contractor create a fantastic hardscape for their lake home, giving them a low-maintenance solution for driveway, patios, walkways and more.

The design challenge for this year-round lake home in southern Minnesota was to unify the outdoor living spaces while providing a low maintenance solution as well as protect the shoreline from erosion. A paving stone driveway, walkways and patios were linked together with hardscape design elements, shapes and colors, including paving stone surfaces and retaining walls for slope transition and erosion control.

The design incorporates Willow Creek Paving Stones’ Slatestone and Slatestone Grande pavers in the Shor color for the driveway, walkways, patios and space under the structural porch, creating a seamless transition among the outdoor living spaces. A walkway on one side of the home with a small patio and stairs leads to the paver patio under the structural porch. For contrast in texture, shape and color, the designer employed Slatestone in a contrasting color on the side patio and employed Tekstone in Brown and Dekrastone in Mocha borders around the paver fields for contrast.

Retaining walls and stairs transition the slope down to the lake and gazebo. Retaining wall units were selected in to closely complement paver color choices. Willow Creek Bullnose and Capstone units worked with other products to offer a finishing touch to and complement the natural stone accents and the rip rap employed for shoreline protection.

Paver choices are from Willow Creek’s Select Series that incorporates Infusion™ technology, which provides vibrant color, enhanced color longevity, heightened durability and additional stain-resistant properties. Select Series pavers can be laid in a standard application as in this project, or in a permeable solution to prevent runoff.

This project demonstrates careful planning to maximize enjoyment from the outdoor living spaces while providing a beautiful solution for the driveway, patios, porch, slope transitions and shoreline protection. The homeowners are very pleased with the project, which was featured along with the designer/installation company in the hometown newspaper.