Landscapers and designers working to redesign their own homes is not an especially common occurrence. But Matthew Sabine, founder of Absolute Landscape & Turf Services, had a specific vision for the backyard of his Mariottsville home.
“I had multiple conversations with my family and we like the overall aesthetic of the property,” he explains. “The bones of it are excellent. But over time, our family developed and our needs developed. We never thought we could have a pool or anything of that nature because of the surrounding woodland environment.”
Sabine started redeveloping the area around his family home in 2017, starting with the installation of an outdoor fireplace and slowly expanding to include more features over time.
The project, which was titled “Family Backyard Retreat,” now includes an outdoor patio, two fire features, a jacuzzi and outdoor pool with built-in lounge chairs, and even a pizza oven.
In summer, it’s the perfect spot for pool parties, barbecues and other outdoor gatherings.
Sabine notes that in creating this build for his backyard, he had to strike a delicate balance between making room for the pool and other new installations and preserving the woodlands around his development.
“We had to avoid destroying Mother Nature’s beauty, with all the surrounding trees that have been there for so many years,” he says. “Those were major considerations.”
Lay of the Land
One of the main challenges that Sabine and the other contractors working on the Family Backyard Retreat faced was the land itself. In addition to being a wooded area, the land’s topography made it difficult to start building.
“The vision was to create a lower terrace, which was going to be the pool space,” Sabine recalls. “The challenge in that aspect was the grade and the contour. We had elevation changes to contend with and there were setbacks from septic. The orientation of the pool had to be laid out in order to accomplish the septic requirement.”
The space was pushed to its limit, right up to the furthest point that elevation, and septic-related limitations, would allow in order to maximize everything that could be done with the property.
Classic Composition
Sabine wanted to be sure that the backyard build would not look dated in a few years. That effort extends to the kinds of materials he used for the project.
The poolside area and the space near the fire features uses natural stone, with some sourced locally and some having been imported.
Synthetic materials were also used for the driveway, and composite decking boards make up the patio.
“We were very focused on doing something that would be unique but that would also be long-standing,” he explains. “Not something that would go out of style in two years.”