251 Hatt Street – Dundas Valley Passivhaus Garden by Virginia Burt Designs

Dundas Valley Passivhaus Garden
Project Context

Embraced by the Niagara Escarpment, Dundas is a historic valley town nestled amongst woodlands and bluffs. Despite typical development patterns in the area permitting 60% building coverage, the owner boldly chose to dedicate 71% of the property to garden space – a deliberate act of restraint that speaks to profound ecological values. This landscape plays an integral role in the fabric of the streetscape and greater community, engaging in constant dialogue with passersby and redefining our relationship with urban greenspace.

Design (Threshold and Journey)

The journey through the garden is choreographed as a sequence of thresholds—entry, passage, and place.

From the outset, the design subverts expectations. A native micro-forest replaces the conventional front lawn and reaches toward the sidewalk, displaying a layered composition of native understory trees, shade-tolerant shrubs, and woodland ephemerals framed on the street side by an elegant Corten hoop edger.

This re-wilding gesture reframes the private garden as a public call to action –to consider nature’s role in well-being and daily life. This is more than simple landscaping; it is an urban design manifesto.
Beyond the forest, a serpentine Corten pillar fence weaves its way around feature trees and flowing grasses. A tactile spring-gate beckons visitors through, opening onto a contemplative meadow of drought-tolerant native grasses and pollinator-supporting perennials such as Echinacea, Rudbeckia, and Aster. Compared to the denser woodland, the meadow shines. Tufted hairgrass catches light and wind, following nature’s rhythms in a swaying tapestry.

A Corten steel moon gate stands as the garden’s philosophical centerpiece—an ancient symbol of transformation that marks the passage to the private gardens: kitchen garden, teahouse, and dining terrace. Adjacent to the gate, a lichen-covered boulder grounds the eye. This granite boulder is one of many on site, all chosen to create a physical dialogue with each other as well as the iconic Niagara Escarpment limestone surrounding the Dundas Valley.

Six raised Corten steel vegetable planters cheerfully greet visitors as they pass through the moon gate. The kitchen garden hosts seasonal rotations of culinary herbs, heirloom vegetables, and edible flowers. Strategic companion planting enhances productivity while mitigating pest pressure, demonstrating how aesthetic and productive functions can seamlessly integrate in contemporary landscapes.

Overlooking the kitchen garden, the teahouse deck invites quiet repose. The teahouse itself connects directly to the owner’s agrarian heritage by repurposing family heirloom tools and materials, such as century-old barn board cladding and an antique auger repurposed as a door handle. These choices establish a garden that feels simultaneously contemporary and timeless, experimental and deeply rooted.

At the adjacent dining terrace, water bubbles in a reflective pond, framing a sculpture above. The terrace plantings create a contemplative and intimate atmosphere through a restrained palette of textural evergreens, architectural perennials and grasses, and specimen Japanese maples. Together, the property’s distinct plant communities create resilient ecological zones that respond to site conditions while guiding the experiential journey through the garden. Native species comprise over 75% of the plant palette, supporting local pollinators and birds while requiring minimal irrigation after establishment. This ecological performance underpins the garden’s aesthetic and experiential richness, demonstrating how sustainability and beauty can – and should – co-exist.

Layered Stormwater Management

The garden’s environmental strategies operate beneath its poetic surface. Stormwater management infrastructure spans the entire property, forming a network that captures, stores and utilizes all water on site—a remarkable feat made possible through an integrated approach that transforms what would otherwise be an environmental liability into a resource that sustains the garden’s diverse plantings.
Starting at the high point, two intensive native-pollinator green roofs capture, filter, and store rainwater. During heavy rain events, any excess water is conveyed through downspouts and divided into two locations. One downspout conveys water to a geocellular stormwater device that collects, holds, and releases water, while the other downspout releases stormwater onto pavers where it settles, filtering through permeable concrete and into the sandy soils below. When combined with ground-plane gardens, an astonishing 91% of the site remains permeable.

Social & Economic Benefits

Though private, this garden has become an informal outdoor classroom, offering impromptu tours that demonstrate how domestic landscapes contribute to urban resilience. By inviting the public into the landscape, the owner regularly educates visitors about sustainable garden practices, water conservation strategies, and mitigating the urban heat island effect. The conversations within the garden have a far-reaching impact on the greater community, inspiring creative approaches to urban design.

By challenging conventional landscape design principles, this project reveals itself as a profound statement about our relationship with place. The jury will appreciate how this project achieves remarkable complexity within a constrained urban site. It presents deliberate contradictions—between architecture and wilderness, between contemporary and cultural, between private retreat and public inspiration. Through these tensions, it offers a compelling vision of how residential landscapes can respond to both personal and planetary needs in the Anthropocene.

• Other landscape architecture offices involved in the design of the landscape:
Virginia Burt Designs

• Architecture offices involved in the design:
Akb Architects

• Other credits:
Richard Mandelkorn – Photography
Jessica Crandlemire – Photography

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