Timber and stone lake home at dusk with rectangular pool, blue lounge seating, lanterns and manicured lawn - Mom's Design Build

Minnetonka Lakescape

MINNETONKA, MN

Completed 2023

3D rendering of a timber and stone home with curved stone wall, stone piers and bluestone entry walkway - Mom's Design Build

Lantern-lit stone piers and curved stone retaining wall beside a paver walkway, with a timber home and lake at dusk - Mom's Design Build

3D RENDERINGFINAL MASTERPIECE

Drag to compare

TA-DA!

Property Serviced by Mom’s Fine Gardening

Behind the Design

Design Notes

Before

A brand-new home on a Lake Minnetonka bluff, and a memory the owners couldn’t shake: their mountain vacation home beside a stream. They wanted this landscape to carry all five elements — water, fire, wood, air, earth.

The Idea

Give each element a stage. A commissioned bubbling orb greets the front entry; a wood-burning fire pit perches on the bluff edge above the lake; new trees and deep gardens breathe through the yard; and a Cor-ten steel statement wall — book-ended by nine-foot basalt columns — plants the earth at the door.

After

A heated clay-paver driveway rolls to a natural stone walkway, hidden strip drainage rings the stone pool deck, and a Klingstone permeable path hairpins down the bluff to the lake — ATV-friendly, garden-lined, modern mountain from top to shore.

The Brief

—A finished driveway and permeable paths throughout the yard
—Gardens and native plantings through the bluff zone
—A pool deck, flat lawn for family games, and retaining walls
—Easy front-stoop access for aging parents — minimal steps
—The feel of their mountain vacation home

Materials & Craft

Cor-ten steel feature wall
Basalt columns with pier-mount lanterns
Heated clay-paver driveway
Travertine & bluestone patios
Klingstone permeable path
Commissioned bubbling-orb water feature

The Cor-ten wall

An 8-foot fully-footed block wall clad in Cor-ten steel, templated on-site to fit the crevices of its flanking basalt columns exactly — with a full-length annual planting bed on top, its irrigation and drainage hidden inside the wall.

Fire on the bluff

The wood-burning fire pit sits at the bluff edge overlooking the lake — the element of fire, placed where the view earns it.

The disappearing drain

Strip drainage around the pool is cut directly into the stone deck — protection you never see.

A path that switchbacks

The Klingstone-finished permeable path makes hairpin turns through the bluff zone, giving comfortable — even ATV — access to the lake below.

The hard part

The sheer tonnage of natural stone on a 30-plus-degree slope: hand-picked outcropping boulders, basalt columns hoisted by bobcat, and drainage engineered for every terrace between the house and the water.