A 1.5-acre canvas in Delacour, shaped into one seamless outdoor home.
After two years staring at a blank rural lot, the owners needed a plan that pulled front and back together — visible from every interior viewpoint, built to outlast a Calgary winter.
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Newly built. Two years untouched. One design to tie it all together.
The owners had recently built their forever home on a generous rural lot in Delacour — but for two seasons the land outside the walls remained raw, disconnected, and overwhelming to plan. They needed a partner who could see the property as one continuous experience.
Taz designed a seamless front + backyard that reads as one composition from every interior viewpoint of the home. The cornerstone is Bridgewood paving stones by Barkman Concrete in a wood-grain finish — laid in long, directional runs that draw the eye from the driveway, around the house, and out into the yard.
A natural dry creek bed threads through the property as a quiet narrative element, bridging the front and back grades with rustic boulders and a graded mix of rundle and limestone decorative rock. At the end of that path: a firepit patio tucked into the back corner — the destination that closes the loop.
Phase 1 establishes the bones — hardscape, grading, decorative rock and the firepit. Phase 2 will layer in vertical elements: planting beds, specimen trees, soft uplighting and a privacy structure framing the firepit.
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Specified products, every one of them named.
What was needed — and how we approached it.
A blank acreage with no connection between front and back.
The property had been freshly built with two seasons of untouched grading — a long, sloping lot with no defined paths, no destination zones, and no visual relationship between the front entry and the backyard living areas.
The owners' interior layout meant the yard was visible from every major room: kitchen, dining, primary bedroom, and the great room. Anything fragmented would read as unfinished from inside the house — not just outside it.
- Steep transition between front and rear grades
- No defined activity zones or anchoring destination
- Continuous sightlines from multiple interior rooms
- Calgary climate demands hardscape that survives freeze-thaw
One continuous design language; one destination at the end.
We led with a single hardscape vocabulary — Bridgewood paving stones in directional runs — used at the driveway transition, the side passage and the rear patio. Material consistency does the heavy lifting that planting would have done in summer.
A natural dry creek bed solves the grading challenge as a feature rather than a problem. Rustic boulders set the scale, with rundle and limestone decorative rock graded along the channel. The firepit patio gives the eye somewhere to end.
- Bridgewood paving stones — wood-grain finish, long directional runs
- Dry creek bed bridging front-to-back grade change
- Boulders + rundle + limestone graded rock palette
- Firepit patio as the rear destination zone
The 2D plan we walked through before breaking ground.
The full project, one frame at a time.
I am over the moon happy with Tazscapes! I had the great fortune to use Tazscapes for my backyard last year in evergreen SW and this year I had Taz come and provide me a landscape design for the frontyard and his work was stunning!
Everything we brought to this project.
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Whether your lot is half a city plot or a full acreage, we start with the same conversation — a free on-site consultation, a measured 2D plan, and a transparent budget envelope before any ground moves.