NATURAL PARTNERS

The fact that Treetop offered no place to “dig in” was fine with Roxana Robinson when she was just a summer visitor to the Litchfield County, Conn., property. But ownership opened up a whole new relationship. Standing back and looking at her beloved family summer home in 2009, she knew that she needed someplace to garden, and unfortunately the land offered no obvious outlets for that sort of pursuit. In fact, the terrain was so devoid of earth-cultivating opportunities that Roxana’s husband, Hamilton, figured she was retiring her work gloves. Wrong.

Although initially stymied, she called in friend and landscape designer Patrick Chassé for input. The redistribution of earth Chassé suggested was so radical that Roxana really could not visualize what