This residential backyard was designed and built as part of REAL SIMPLE Magazine’s 2024 Real Simple Home project, which recruited best-in-class designers to collaborate on a respectful yet playful reimagining of a historic brownstone in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights neighborhood. We created four gathering zones, using curved lines to keep visitors’ eyes moving around the landscape. And, we took a bold approach to the hardscaping in contrast with the delicate leaves of the native species we selected, such as sweetbay magnolia, cinnamon fern and alumroot.