Photography by R. Todd Davis
He wanted a pond. She wanted a pool—or as she put it, an ocean. He wanted roses. She wanted a veritable mosaic of flowers in all colors and textures that would delight the eye across all seasons. Oh yeah, and while they were at it—a place to shower and change clothes.
When Chip and Muffy Matthews moved into their traditional-style home in Olivette 31 years ago, the kitchen, breakfast room and sunroom overlooked a grand brick terrace that stepped down to a tennis court. Their daughter, Marka, was a year old, and Mrs. Matthews enjoyed playing tennis on their court with friends and, later, with Marka. The land around it was flat and unadorned, the vista spoiled by a telephone pole.
When Marka went off to college, the couple pondered whether to rebuild the deteriorating concrete court. Instead, they started dreaming of what they really wanted—the roses, the pond, the pool, the bathhouse. The project took on a life of its own.
Now, the Matthews’ backyard landscape is an organic wonderland of rock and boulders in which they’ve nestled a spa and a long, gentle waterfall above a graceful pond and a naturalistic pool. The pool house? Yes, it has a shower, and a bedroom, and a great room with a huge stone fireplace, and a state-of-the-art kitchen, and a bar, and a large deck overlooking the pond. On second thought, let’s call it a guest house.
Mrs. Matthews’ affinity for water goes back to her childhood, when her family would spend summers at Cape Cod. Mr. Matthews’ love of roses and other long-flowering species also dates to his childhood and the hibiscus his mother grew in the family’s greenhouse.
But let’s fast-forward to 1998. As Mrs. Matthews tells the story, she flipped through magazine after magazine to decide on the look she wanted. She wanted the most water surface she could fit on the 2-acre property—but Mr. Matthews insisted that it would not be a typical, rectilinear pool.
He wanted a pond and stream, but for her, that conjured up images of mosquitoes and snakes. The natural spillway that emerged is one of her favorite aspects.
“I wanted everything to be soothing, undulating, have movement,” she says.
She and her husband laid out the design elements themselves before calling in experts.
They drove to Perryville to shop for Missouri rock and boulders at Semco Distributing. For Mrs. Matthews, it was like picking out penny candy in a confectionery. She flitted from one boulder to the next, choosing them for their textures, colors, sizes and shapes.
She named many of them: Big Red, Picasso, Sea Otter. When the salesman finished weighing the boulders, the couple had bought 287 tons. And that didn’t include the paving stones. They chose huge flagstones with a plum hue for walking paths and shimmering gold and silver quartz for the pool deck.
When the ground was excavated for the pool and pond, none of the soil was moved off-site. Instead, the earthmovers sculpted it into elevations that offer privacy while suggesting rhythm and movement. At the highest elevation at the rear, a round spa bubbles over into the irregularly shaped pool. The couple chose an aggregate pool finish called Pebble Tec that has a shimmering, dark-aqua hue.
Next to the spa, the headwaters of a stream spill over boulders to a large pond filled with koi. Along the way, butterflies flit among Cutleaf Japanese maples, butterfly bushes, fragrant sumac, Japanese blood grass, globe blue spruce and garden phlox. Annual plantings of sun coleus and palms fill in the few blanks in the mature landscape.
The pond wraps around the perimeter of a party-sized deck outside the guest house. Steppers cross the pond among water hyacinths and native and night-blooming water lilies. Japanese glass fishing balls of bright colors glint in the late afternoon sun. A bronze crocodile suns itself on a rock.
A grove of river birches screens the pond from neighbors. Cranes cast in bronze stand at attention. Oakleaf hydrangeas soften the water’s edge. A settee for two in a quiet corner of the yard offers the best view of the pond in the foreground, with the pool behind it. A Blue Atlas cedar makes an architectural statement at water’s edge. A purple-leaf plum and tightly planted container pots splash color in the distance. The rock integrates and embraces the different elements of the landscape—the pool, waterfall, stream, pond and guest house.
“Chip wanted it to look natural, like God put it here,” says Mrs. Matthews. He also didn’t want visitors to see all of the elements at once. “He wanted it to be a series of surprises and reveals,” she says. “When you’re on the patio, you don’t even see the pond. It’s a surprise.”
Designed by Rex Reiger, no corner of the garden has been left untended. The side entrance to the guest house is gracefully landscaped with Virginia sweetspire, oakleaf hydrangea, dogwood, rhododendron and azaleas, and a dwarf plum, all planted under a majestic Norway spruce. Snow-on-the-Mountain scrambles across at ground level.
The couple enjoys the garden on many levels. Mr. Matthews takes morning swims in the pool. Mrs. Matthews hosts bridge parties on the terrace and cocktail parties in the plush guest house. The couple dines on the patio and revels in the twilight afterglow from the secret bench tucked behind the pond. And then there are days when he takes a break from his office in the Westport area, where he’s president and CEO of Wrymark, Inc., a prosthetic and orthotic manufacturing company. “I hate to go home for lunch because I’ll end up staying there,” Mr. Matthews says.
Did they get what they wanted—an ocean? A pond? Roses?
The couple gets a taste of the real ocean during winter getaways to their condo in Delray Beach, on Florida’s Atlantic coast. For the rest of the year, yes—the pool, spa, waterfall and pond form a sort of surrogate ocean for their home in landlocked Olivette.
But where are the roses Mr. Matthews wanted? There’s not a single floribunda or hybrid or climbing rose to be found, but he isn’t the least bit disappointed. He says he wouldn’t change a thing—he doesn’t even like to cut flowers for temporary arrangements.
That, he rather matter-of-factly says, would spoil the painting.
