A garden sanctuary with lots of eye candy

Six years ago, interior designer Hannah Dee traded her Center City condo for a stately circa-1929 Mount Airy Tudor twin. A delight to decorate and renovate, the house featured art deco-era architectural details that were highlighted with one-of-a kind furniture, family heirlooms, and art that complemented the structure's lovely bones.

But the outdoors left her stumped.

As a professional designer, she had high expectations for the space. So she read books and magazines, even buying a bush here and there. But come 2008, it was time to find an expert.

Her research turned up Maria Hasenecz of Livable Landscapes in Wyndmoor, who sketched out a plan that would transform her barren, exposed front and backyards into a place with separate spaces where Dee now entertains regularly and even works. The by-product of the collaboration was a lasting friendship that has the two regularly collaborating and making shopping trips to Lambertville, Lancaster, and Frenchtown for more finds.

When Dee asked for a contemporary garden space, it was an unusual request for an area where azaleas and rhododendrons are staples. So for clues, Hasenecz studied Dee's interior - which effortlessly combines 18th-century antiques with midcentury modern - and started asking the usual questions.

"Are they a Chippendale kind of client or are they Material Culture people? Are they asymmetrical people or neat people with everything in pairs in their house?" Hasenecz said. "I can figure out what kind of exterior they will appreciate."

Dee's interior is a lovely melange of cultural influences, lively color, and crisp geometric forms and patterns that span genre and era. She also preserved the home's original details, such as Vitrolite glass tiles in baths she had restored, parquet inlaid floors, arched doorways, chrome shower doors, and a wood-burning fireplace.

"I think this house has eye candy everywhere," says Hasenecz. In turn, so does the new outdoor space.

Clean-lined, it is a series of "rooms," a Hasenecz signature, that mirror the stylistic tone of the inside. "I knew I wanted to have different experiences as you walked through the garden," says Dee.

Since the house is on a corner and situated on a little hill, Dee also needed coverage. "In the first two years I lived at the house, I rarely sat outside because there was no privacy."